“I apologise if I’ve offended you”

[MadMaryBoddington]

AIBU to think this is a mealy-mouthed, patronising, inadequate excuse for an apology.

Just had ‘words’ with a van driver who had mounted the kerb and was driving with two wheels along the pavement on the village high street this morning.

Five year old ds was running ahead of me on the way to school, and suddenly there was this van driving along the pavement towards him. I yelled at ds to STOP, he did, about three metres in front of the van. Van carried on moving. I raced up to him, grabbed ds, and the driver then pulled off the kerb as I approached his window to yell at him.

He did not appear to think he’d done anything wrong. He ‘apologised if he had offended me’. Offended! I asked if he had children and how he would feel if he saw his child running along a pavement with a large vehicle approaching along it. He said he did have kids, and that he could assure me that he ‘was in full control of his vehicle the whole time’.

I’m raging. The high street is narrow. This happened at a pinch point where vehicles cannot pass side by side if they are large. Legally they should wait for a gap, but often they mount the kerb instead, especially at rush hour. It always makes me angry but they do at least usually stop dead if they see a pedestrian and pull off the pavement straight away. This guy carried on driving.

I normally keep the dc close to me or hold their hands along this stretch of road so that I can grab them if necessary. It’s typical that this morning I had my hands full with musical instruments and bags and so on and was momentarily distracted by saying something to dd behind me, and ds had run further ahead than I’d have liked.

Ironically it was a Highways Agency van.

You have over reacted.
You were rude and aggressive

You know agression isn't in itself a bad thing right? Sometimes it is warranted, it's only women who are judged for using it correctly I've noticed though.

YANBU OP. It wasn't an apology and it didn't even make sense.

I had a woman drive over the curb while I was standing there waiting to cross with my children. Fucking idiot, I could have killed her (if she'd have bothered to stop and apologise or even notice what she did, which she didn't). Inches from me and the kids.

Clearly the driver is in the wrong - consider what would happen if he had hit the child and the case went to court. Don't think whether or not the OP was holding his hand would make any difference.

Oh and don't blame the parent or the five year old for not holding hands They were both using the pavement correctly the child doesn't need hand holding, the adult needs driving lessons.

So individual drivers may override the Highway Code and the law, because they perceive a case of poor town planning? WTF!?

^Try thinking outside the box and contacting the council, along with all the other parents etc and seeing if the narrow road can (a) be widened or (b) a one way system set up to allow free flow of traffic, no pavement mounting.

It really isnt difficult to think rather than react hysterically.^

Precisely my point. Rather than react impulsively - or as you say hysterically - in response to an apparent instance of poor planning, the driver could have taken the democratic route and sent a message to the local council (or their employer, the HA, depending on the size of road) upon returning home; slow, sensible and frustrating as that process may be.

What the driver may not do is throw all their training and judgement aside and decide that their impatience is more important than the law and others' safety. By doing so they demonstrated the sort of poor judgement and impulse control - hysterical overreaction to a minor inconvenience, as you prefer - that suggests they are not safe to drive.

I have acknowledged that I should have been holding his hand, and that I normally do. My AIBU is about the driver’s ridiculous non-apology that shows that he thought he’d done nothing wrong.

Agree with pirate0 you know that vehicles tend to mount the pavement here as there's no space for vehicles to pass, but you let your child run ahead.

I don't see why it is okay to let children run ahead at all, take control over your child and walk sensibly to school.

YANBU

If you think that I bet you are someone with a similar attitude to the driver...

Don't be silly. On a busy, narrow road I'd make sure that I had control of my child. Not be relying on drivers to behave in a safe manner because we all know that doesn't always happen.

Driver was in the wrong

His apology was shit

You should complain

This happened to a friend of mine who was walking my two home with her two...apparently she was so terrified of what i would do to her if she 'lost' one of my children that she really let rip

She wouldn't have thought like that had he not been running ahead.

Maybe or maybe not. But the child is allowed on the pavement, running ahead or not. The van however is not allowed to drive on the pavement. She hasn't done anything wrong apart from not consider the utter stupidity and selfishness of others. Personally I wouldnt be expecting a van to be driving down the pavement either when the road is there right next to it for that purpose.

I am totally with DungeonDragon, the only person doing anything illegal was the van driver
as Dungeon posted from the Highway Code:
"You MUST NOT drive on or over a pavement, footpath or bridleway except to gain lawful access to property, or in the case of an emergency."

Pedestrians are allowed to use the pavements.

He had not just offended the OP but had acted illegally

Small children are notorious for poor road sense.

Unlike van drivers. Who drive on the pavement. While small children are around. And which is illegal anyway, obvs, because it's DANGEROUS.

The focus on the notpology is odd, because it's the van driver's weird sense of entitlement (which is where the notpology stems from) that really needs challenging. Which is what OP did, and it gets treated as 'being offended'. FFS. And there are some seriously weird and victim-blaming responses on this thread. Mothers need to be perfect all of the time, remember?

Can we all agree on one thing that the driver was in the wrong and if he wasn't on the pavement the child would have been in no danger

A child in my village was killed a few years ago when he was walking along the road

And my friends child nearly died when a car mounted the pavement

Both children we minding their own business walking on the pavement

NoqontroI Actually on a road like the OP describes I wouldn't be letting mine run ahead whether they have the right to or not, because of scenarios like this.

The only way to deal with this is to demand a full and immediate refund
It’s discusting

Ooh actually friends child was cycling

overreacted? I think it was mother's instinct. I would have yelled at the driver too.

I have been pondering what the response would have been if I'd posted:

AIBU for being upset woman shouted at me rudely? I drove my van onto the pavement by her child but she should have been holding his hand and I had important deliveries to make. I even told her that I was sorry for offending her, but that wasn't good enough for her.

I would be flamed into a different universe

and once again, the child's presence did not cause the driver to do what they did. They did it regardless of anyone's presence on the pavement.

Would they have refrained from doing it if they had seen a person on that section of pavement? maybe, maybe not, we don't know.

Would they definitely have seen a bigger person on, or about to step onto, that section of pavement? We don't know. We do know that's the risk the driver took.

Of course you would

That was aimed at Teateaandmoretea. I was agreeing with her

On a lighter note ds1 got a question wrong on his 'practice' theory test

It asked if you can drive on the pavement

He said yes...because he had seen so many people doing it

NoqontroI Actually on a road like the OP describes I wouldn't be letting mine run ahead whether they have the right to or not, because of scenarios like this.

Agreed, in fact I am really strict about my kids running off ahead. But it doesn't change that drivers must stick to the road and that is the law and quite correctly so.

It reminds me of drivers going through red lights at pelican crossings as you're starting to push your DC across in their buggy. I've yelled after them, "It's red, you pillock!"