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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU - to expect parents to park safely when picking up their kids?

53 replies

sparkybabe · 19/10/2007 16:12

Outside our local school there are the usual yellow zig-zags and opposite there are double yellow lines. Since the start of the new term there have been about 4 cars persistantly parking all over theese to pick their kids up. One of the mums takes their registrations, and passes them onto the police (who do nothing) but today one guy saw her taking his number and leaned out of the car to yell 'wot you doing'. when we said he is parked illegally and endangering the kids who cross the road, he said 'oh i'm only picking up my little kid' (we, OTOH are having a coffee morning?) and we had a bit of a slanging match. He didn't move tho. We asked the headteacher to come out (he's a big lad) but he turned up about 15 minutes later, when all the cars were gone. What can we do?

OP posts:
3littlebats · 19/10/2007 16:14

Our local newspaper ran a campaign publishing photos of number plates for a while. Why not try giving them a call?

Tigaaaarghna · 19/10/2007 16:15

I dutifully joined the end of what I thought was aqueue for a junction further up the road on wednesday afternoon. After sitting there for 5 minutes frowning at the terribly rude people who were driving on tehwrong side of the road in order to queue jump I realised it wasn't a fricking queue, they were just parked waiting for their kids to come out of the school!! Those terrribly rude queue-jumpers were locals!

Original poster
sparkybabe · 19/10/2007 16:16

The road is actually a really wide one, lots of good parking spaces. They just don't want to park and WALK!

OP posts:
Lulumama · 19/10/2007 16:18

it is the same at every school.. DS came home with a letter from the police warning parents about parking dangerously... it is always the same people at our school too. would rather block the road and park illegally than walk 500 yards

toothicky · 19/10/2007 16:18

No suggestions I'm afraid, but like you, it drives me mad. At my dcs school there is plenty of parking but parents insist on parking right outside the school so that their dcs don't have to walk the full minute it would take them otherwise.

suey2 · 19/10/2007 16:18

yanbu. this drives me nuts. i'm all right jack' at its worst. really looking forward to 4 by 4s being charged £25 a day to drive in central london.

captainmummy · 19/10/2007 16:20

wasn't it in london where they are thinking of banning cars in school roads ALTOGETHER? Bring it on, I say.

MaureenMLove · 19/10/2007 16:21

Phone the council and get a traffic warden to come and patrol the area? TBH, people like that will do it again and again, there's nothing you can do to stop it. Our school tried a name and shame campaign, but they don't give a stuff about endanagering childrens lives, so they couldn't care less about being named and shamed.

maisemor · 19/10/2007 16:21

Have the police given a reason as to why they aren't doing anything about it?

cornsilk · 19/10/2007 16:22

It's the blatant cheek that annoys me - and always the same cars. Sometimes when I nip out to get some lunch at work I can't park when I get back, as nursery parents have parked in the staff spaces in the school car park and then saunter back when they've dropped them off. Don't care at all that they've made the teachers lose their lunch time.

MrsArchieTheInventor · 19/10/2007 16:22

'Oh I'm only picking up my little kid' - wtf did he think you were doing? Having a fecking picnic by the side of the road??!!

Inconsiderate twunt!!

DS hasn't started school yet so I guess I have all these joys to come, but I get so angry at people who think the rules of the masses don't apply to them. And don't get me started on parent and child spaces...

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LunarScream · 19/10/2007 16:25

Contact your local community police officer, and get them to just hang around outside the school and have words with the offenders. Worked here for a while - but the exercise needs repeating every so often.

Original poster
sparkybabe · 19/10/2007 16:25

we have had the police round, in fact last term we ever had the local radio station involved, and the police stood there while a big BMW drove up into the gates, and reversed back out again, then parked up the road on the double yellows.

OP posts:
Original poster
sparkybabe · 19/10/2007 16:26

btw lol at TWUNT! He was, def.

OP posts:
hatwoman · 19/10/2007 16:27

I am constantly staggered that people can be so stunningly selfish/ignorant/stupid. It's not a difficult thing to grasp is it? I did see a piece on the local news where the kids dished out "parking tickets" to offenders. it was mainly the older kids iirc, years 5 and 6 perhaps. they had been well drilled - all very polite, explaining the reasons and embarrassing people into realising they were putting their petty selfish needs higher than the lives and safety of school children. no idea if it was sucessful in the long-term but perhaps something you could explore? If its a constant problem at your school perhaps you could suggest/request a meeting between concerned parents and the head?

dustystar · 19/10/2007 16:27

There is a local authority care home near our school that needs constant access for ambulances etc and parents are always parking in there and blocking the way What makes this worse is there is plenty of parking available in the road PLUS a public carpark (free) just 100 yards further up the road.

MaureenMLove · 19/10/2007 16:32

MrsA, you haven't heard the half of it! You wait til you see the parents who let their lo's out of cars in the middle of moving traffic or the ones who think its fine not to use a car seat!

hatwoman · 19/10/2007 16:34

re the care home. we too don;t have a problem - there are usually enough places on the same road as the school and if not there's a free public car park about 5 minutes walk away. but people still park illegally. One woman in particular is a constant offender, when her dc was in nursery she would wait in the car on the zig zags until the kids started coming out and then leg it in to get her kid. I have refrained myself, for 4 years now, from telling her that her fat arse would benefit from the exercise were she to park properly. or even - shock horror - walk all the way.

sugar34plum · 19/10/2007 16:37

i have the problem with parents driving into ds school carpark. Only a tiny carpark and its a main stream school with a hearing impaired unit attached. Parents and taxis with hearing impaired children are allowed to drive in as the hi kids going in to school at the very bottom on the carpark. Yet lately you cant get in there for every other parents deciding to drop there non hi kids off as its more convenient for them.

Same at my dds school there are a couple of disabled kids who again there parents are allowed to drive in because they cannot walk very far. Yet others parents see this as unfair!

PeachyFleshCrawlingWithBugs · 19/10/2007 16:43

wee're finally gettinga crossinga nd traffic island built, afte one minor accident (I was hit, ds3 just got out fo way in time), one near fatal accident (where the yummy mummies A) stepped over victim whilst lying unconscious with apramedics, and then B) one aprked in the space left for the ambulance and just refused to move car and wandered off.

have witnessed a few near misses before, always with parent driving the car claiming they are powerless to aprk elsewhere - there's a free car park 2 minutes walka wy FGS!

Original poster
sparkybabe · 19/10/2007 16:47

that te thing tho, peachy, we've got a traffic island, double yellows, zigzigs, signs, fuious mums, ...and they still park there! I've actually just emailed th council to see if they will do anything.

OP posts:
opinionateddad · 19/10/2007 16:51

is it a bad idea to say that I think most parents shouldn't be driving their kids to school

At the local school around 9am people part on yellow lines, chevrons, other peoples driveways, gardens and grass verges... annoying thing is that most of them live then than 2 miles from the school and there are nice pathways to get there...

Does this not also fall into the the 'I'm alright jack' catagory??

PeachyFleshCrawlingWithBugs · 19/10/2007 16:51

this island reduces it to one way traffic, therefore if anyone aprks there they'll entirely block the road. As its a very main road on a busy one way system that also leads to the Uni and m-way junctions, I suspect nobody wold survive the experience!

We did ahve the full yellow lines / zigzags etc previsouly, it was someone parking on thsoe that hit me (and would have rpesumable killed ds3 but I cant remember how he got out the way- he was holding my hand one minute, next minute my hand was hurting, twunty bloke ahd hit me and Dh was reading the riot act....... cant remember the rest. Scared life out of ds3's CM though who was nearby!)

Only way we got acytion was by the Head basically phoning everyone daily to complain. For years! And then Uni changed its hours so the rush time for them meant theroad was busiest at 9am.... and the lollipop lady resigne din fear of ehr life, and nobody else would touch the job.....

We were so relieved when the builders turned up last week!

Does anyone else find its the Merc MPV / chelsea Tractor crowd, or is that just our particular slightly posh school?

PeachyFleshCrawlingWithBugs · 19/10/2007 16:53

If you were local I'd lend you my DH....... he ahs a tendency to chase idiot parkers away LOL!

It's a lifetime employed telling lorry drivers what to do that does it, I think- he's forgotten long ago that he's weedya dn short, ansd seems to find the yelling and facial expression more than covers it.....

Slubberdegullion · 19/10/2007 17:03

yanbu. We live opposite our village primary school and for about half an hour twice a day, madness reigns.

I don't even attempt to get my car in or out of our drive during the school run, it's too dangerous. What is it about the school run.....'I have kids in my car, I have to get them to/pick them up from school and therefore......Oh let's just fuck the highway code shall we, let's drive like morons and park wherever I sodding want.....my legs, my childrens legs...what are you expecting me to use them? Now? At this time? To get to the school? Oh I don't think so'.

Idiots.

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