Aibu to be enjoyed with this situation/driving/

[Varnas]

I need to drive my DC to 2 different schools every morning. And most mornings there is a taxi mini van collecting a child from a house near us. He stops and waits for 1-2 minutes in the middle of the street blocking the flow in both directions. There are parking bays on both sides and usually there is enough space for him to park there but he just stops in the middle. I'm usually very calm driver and don't mind waiting but when doing school runs I literally don't have minutes to spare. I'm I unreasonable to expect whether the taxi to be parking in the bays or the child to be ready and wait outside on time? Just to clarify - the child have no visible mobility issues and I have no other option to get to our street.
Is it actually even allowed to stop like that?

You're not in the wrong to want the taxi driver to position themself more considerately when waiting for the child to get in the car. You seem to have three options:

1. Talk to the parent of the child and ask them to have a word with the taxi driver/company.
2. Approach the driver and ask if they could not block the road when waiting for their passenger.
3. Contact the private hire company to explain and ask them to ensure it doesn't happen again.

If you don't like confrontation then 3 is the obvious way to go. Any one of the three should hopefully get a result.

Really? 1 or 2 minutes literally upsets you for the whole day?
You can plan for this. Leave two minutes earlier.

my ds (you might not have seen obvious disability) pick up sometimes delayed people but it s part of driving.

Complain to car company if you really need to ....dont involve the parent who is no doubt stressed enough having a child with SN !

Leave earlier by one or two minutes
Chill
Be grateful you not reliant on transport for your dc..my ds pick up being late could delay taking other dc to school so a far greater annoyance.

Leave the parent out of it.
unless you best friends with them and tend to chat about what their life is like with their SN child.

I wouldn't talk to the parent of the child. It's difficult to have a possibly SN kid waiting out in the street for a taxi that is going to arrive at different times on different days. It sounds like the taxi driver could easily park up out of the way while waiting so that's what should happen.

...because frankly the number of phone calls and issues the parent of a child with SN has to deal with should not have to include other drivers' issues. You can speak directly to taxi company if you must

**LakieLady, don't get me wrong - I understand situations like that and always wait patiently when see that driver has no other option. Bin men, wheelchair users etc - I'm always simpatetic and have no issues waiting. But in this case the driver is just very rude to block the street

• he had where to stop safely
• it's morning hour, he is blocking not just me but also other road users
• it's not one off, it's just his way of collecting the passengers

Just speak with driver or mother. I don’t understand this default complain, complain, complain mentality in lieu of first having a simple conversation

If he's not exactly the same time every day, then OP leaving a minute or two earlier is impossible for her to predict. If he has other options to park then he should be using them, he just can't be bothered.

This is fairly typical. Taxi for my neighbours last night would rather sit on the street, engine on, lights shining into my house and tooting his horn when he got fed up rather than actually driving down the side lane where neighbour lives, or even just calling them to say he is there. At 11.45pm.

You have an issue with a taxi driver, you don't want to speak to the driver so speak to the taxi company. It may not even be the same driver every day (where I live one taxi company owns the minivans run by their company so while drivers own their cars the minivan is shared by any driver on duty) but if you inform the company they can put a memo out to their minivan driver(s).

A simple "I live on and every morning at around 8.30 one of your drivers makes a pick up from one of my neighbours. Please can you ask them not to block the street with the minivan as he waits? I understand that sometimes there may be no option but to block the flow of traffic but this happens every morning even when there are empty spaces that the driver could easily pull into so they aren't blocking the road. Thank you."

YANBU.

This morning a taxi decided to park in the middle of the road right next to a junction. The driver gave me a filthy look when I beeped at him

melj1213
Thanks, that's the advice I was looking for.

Just wanted to come back and add that my DC is disabled and has taxi transport to school - the taxi doesn't block the street but if my kid's pickup was causing a problem I wouldn't mind being approached as long as they were polite to me. However my recourse is to speak to the taxi firm or the LEA, which is an extra job I'd rather not have and I'd be grateful if they took that off my hands and did it themselves!

I would actually rather they didn't speak to the driver during pickup/street blockage as it could cause my child anxiety about being a 'nuisance'.

Exactly...speak to the cab company by all means but don't cause the family or child more stress

..would actually rather they didn't speak to the driver during pickup/street blockage as it could cause my child anxiety about being a 'nuisance'.

You’re being too polite. Some taxi drivers think normal rules don’t apply to them, just sound your horn in future till they move. Another option is setting off before the taxi arrives if you know what time it usually gets there or complain to the company.