To think that school run drivers are selfish cunts?

[GladAllOver]

Just that. They park anywhere and everywhere, regardless of other drivers or local residents.

I remember one memorable pick up from a residential trip. 3 coaches were expected back and parents turned up to collect.
They all started parking in the bus bay (it can take 4 coaches). I parked up down the road and as I walked up the whole bus bay was full of parent's cars.

So the coaches arrive and have nowhere to park and offload the children and luggage. Bonkers.

Not all, but lots around here are really selfish. They park on double yellows, zig zags outside the school, on corners, over crossings!

I walk to/from school and what really annoys me is the amount of times I'm forced to walk out in the road with the buggy as cars have parked on the path or over the crossing.
When I had a car, I just parked slightly further from the school rather than park illegally. Simples.

Our school drivers are generally very good.

It's the delivery vans, builders vans, massive builders lorries, tractors and combine harvesters who are the problem.

There is a bottleneck of residents parked cars we all have to squeeze past. But yes, it makes great business sense to drive an industrial vehicle through that during the busiest half an hour of the day.
(Then when they can't get through, they park up on the pavement and double yellow lines till it all quietens down-really helpful!)

I’m sometimes a school run driver. It’s a 1.5 mile walk to school so if it’s chucking it down we drive. I park legally and use the road safely every time when we do. If I have to park a way from the school and walk, then I do.

In my experience, the vast majority of the ones that don’t park legally and have damaged other vehicles and caused near misses, are drivers that live within close walking distance of the school.

The neighbours near our school are constantly complaining, but I have only seen a handful of occasions where parents have parked inconsiderately (literally once or twice, where I've thought someone has parked like a dick), the vast majority of people park perfectly legally. The school was there long before the houses, if you don't like general school related traffic (which I think is the real issue in our case), then don't buy a house by a school! I've witnessed some horrid confrontations where neighbours have been unreasonably angry that someone has parked, legally, outside their house.

I'm not saying this is the situation near you OP, just thought I'd weigh in with my own small moan - I think there can be horrible people on both sides of this issue.

It depends. If the school provides parking and the parents are ignoring this and parking illegally then yes, they are cunts.

If the school haven't provided any parking then, well, where exactly are people supposed to park?

It’s terrible near where my parents live. They are a street away from a school and have had their stationary car hit numerous times from parents who can’t drive legally never mind park

Due to building works at work, atm we all have to use the underground car park and can only access it from the back of the building. The rear entrance is only accessible from a one-way street that is very, very narrow (you couldn't get anything wider than a transit down there).

It is also the only entrance to a primary school. I think you can guess what's coming next...

... yes, parents block the narrow lane while they take their kids into school. This morning, I got a text from my mate telling me that the tailback caused by parents blocking the road, while staff from several companies are trying to get into the car park, backed up for over half a mile in each direction.

Because of the peculiar road layout (historic town that still has a medieval street plan for much of the town centre), this could gridlock the whole bloody town in about 20 minutes!

In fairness to the parents though, there is next to no public parking in that area, it's almost all residents' permits only. And the 20 or so pay and display spaces are probably occupied by people who work in our building but don't have a car park space.

Not as bad as parents! I avoid schools like the plague during drop off and pick up times. They park where they like, across drives (in other people's drives!), on the pavement, on double yellow lines etc. They stop and pull away without signalling. I once spent a frustrating hour and a half outside a school, where parents had gridlocked the road. There was a l;ot of shouting but no-one would move. The police had to sort it out.

Yanbu, it’s not just school run either, number of knobs that double park outside our village co-op, engine running, blocking traffic, making it dangerous to cross the road. God forbid they should have to walk for 2 minutes from the car park.

Also I don’t understand why secondary school students would need to be driven to school. It’s not a lack of a car park that’s the issue there, at 11 kids should be able to walk, cycle or get a bus.

The only parking at my secondary school (when I was at school) was for teachers. I never saw anybody been driven to school, we all got buses or walked.

They park anywhere and everywhere, regardless of other drivers or local residents.

The minority might. I never did and neither did about 99% of the parents at our primary.

I don't get people who buy houses near schools then whinge about cars on the school run. When we were house hunting we rejected several houses too near schools for this reason.

I'm a school run driver not through choice (got allocated a school in the closest town as the village school was full)
I park and drive legally, if there's no space near the school, I park legally just further away and walk. DS1 is in yr6 so we've been doing this a while and it's a very big school that takes the overflow from the rest of the LEA so lots of drivers.
I would say there are a significant minority of appalling school run drivers but it's certainly not everybody, however there are just as many anti-social parents who walk (bring dogs on site when they are banned, smoke at the school gate so you have to walk through them, shout & swear). I think the bad driving & parking is just an extension of that rather than a symptom of being a driver.

I drive DS to Primary, I park 5 minutes away and walk but I have seen some absolutely bloody awful parking/driving closer to the school
A local organisation used to let us use their large car park for free, which was around a 3 minute safe pedestrianised walk to school but STILL people fought to park by the School gates.
Also, despite the fact that the carpark was huge a lot of parents insisted on all parking up one end to avoid walking an extra 100 yards. They were causing problems and the organisation kept warning School that unless the parents used the carpark more carefully they would have to ban us - guess what happened?

The village school my two went to (YR-Y4) has been there for over 100 years, starting off as a tiny school, When DC1 started there were 50 pupils, by the time DC2 left there were double that and now even more.

In that case I feel sorry for the residents as the amount of cars has just gone up and up but there's no parking except for outside their houses.

The nearby pub used to let everyone park in their large car park which was brilliant but one day they decided not to let them any more.

Sparklingbrook yes!! When I was a bus driver, what you described there was a really common occurrence!!! Completely bonkers.

I am a school run driver, I am not a cunt thank you very much. I , I am appalled by people parking over junctions etc, our school often threaten to call the police over illegal parking, there isn't a car park and three schools in a small area. I regularly feel sorry for the residents, I would never buy a house by a school after experiencing this.

I usually walk but on the very few occasions when I drive I park a few streets away and walk! It really annoys me when parents sit in the car with the engine on waiting! so polluting.

Sparklingbrook, I do have sympathy for that to be fair

@Sparklingbrook

The pub near by our village school did this because the landladies car was damaged TWICE by shit school run drivers who didn't leave details...

Hahaha thank you 😘. I know what you mean. My kids school is horrendous. People blocking others in. Reversing when you’re crossing, parking on zig zags. Someone drove on the wrong side of the road this morning. Annoying!

I can imagine Orgy. I wondered whether ours was because they didn't want loud schoolkids outside their windows at 8.30am after a late night shutting the pub.

I hate them, we walk in, it’s a 20 minute walk. We pass several parents on our walk who are getting into cars to drive.

They all park up on the pavements meaning I can’t get a buggy between their cars and the garden walls. We have to walk out into the road just to get past, often this is really dangerous and they park on blind bends.

I’ve reported it to the police and the school. The police come out and people park considerably for the day and then go back to their dangerous parking. The school don’t give a damn.

It's awful here but I don't blame the parents as there aren't any good places to park. They're inevitably going to have to inconvenience someone. I blame the people who built the school (and surrounding estates) with a distinct lack of parking. And the governments that allow this to continue. It's one thing if your local school is a century old, but this one was built less than ten years ago!