To stand on road to stop parents parking illegally

[ChimneyPot]

Parking at our primary school has been hazardous for years. There is a crossing guard on the main road at the school gates but not on a side road lots of kids have to cross. Parents park on the double yellow lines at the junction of the side road blocking lines of site for pedestrians and cars trying to turn in and out. This often results in the road getting blocked and cars reversing back on to main road.
School sends repeated communication to parents without impact and has asked local authority for bollards and this is under consideration but hasn’t happened yet.

I used to collect my DC from the gate because of the risks but DC wants to be more independent and meet me further away.

I started asking parents not to park and the junction but have been largely ignored so I have started standing on the edge of the road to prevent people parking and this has been effective.
Today someone I know signalled to me to move but I smiled and shook my head and they had to park a few metres down the street . They are not happy with me.

AIBU to block the road?

Do you care about the dangers caused to small children by irresponsible parking?

Do you park like this yourself?

😯😯

Please don’t make this about SAHMs because it isn’t. And you’re doing a disservice to woth parents who don’t ever park illegally.

I spent years juggling school and nursery aged children with going to work all over London. A 1.5 hour journey to get there after drop off was not unusual and it was the sort of job where being late simply wasn’t an option. I used this thing called a breakfast club, sometimes paying extra for a extra early start.

I never parked illegally at school despite my highly pressurised working life. So if you tell me you’re doing it because you’re soooo busy, it doesn’t wash I’m afraid.

Many busy working parents manage to transport their children to school without putting other children at risk.
Some of the excuses on here are ridiculous.

The lack of parking around primary schools is a UK wide issue.
A strategy is needed to resolve the problem not a debate on ethics or moral judgements.
Geewizz.

If parking legally and safely makes you consistently late then your time planning is at fault!

The only sensible, workable strategy surely has to be centred on fewer people driving? I wonder if we can agree on that Red? I mean you can’t just magic up parking space, and even if you could it would need expanding all the time as car ownership just keeps rising it seems.

I wonder if we can also agree that parking where it it’s unsafe to do so shouldn’t be part of anyone’s solution to the problem? Because (let’s not lose sight of what the thread is about) that’s what the OP is trying to prevent.

That strategy will not work.
The evidence is, the problem has not gone away. People are working, they drop the children off via a mode of transport which for most is the car.
How can we accommodate the car, the car is the defacto mode of transport for most in the UK.

As for double yellows.
You may stop briefly on double yellow lines, to pick up or drop off passengers or to pick up or set down heavy goods, provided that there are no other stopping restrictions displayed on signs or on the road surface.
The issue is some areas could be redesignated single yellow, parents should not dither or take longer than necessary. Drop and off which is what DP does.
As a child, I walked to school on my own. Most families have 2 or 1 working parent, which has been encouraged, but there is a cost.

Just saying no cars, or banning the vehicle has not and will not work.

That strategy will not work

What strategy? I didn’t suggest a particular strategy, just that it would need to involve people driving less. Of course it will have to, what else are we going to do, knock houses down to make parking spaces?

As for your idea of redesignating areas single yellow, again, let’s go back to what the OP is about, which is double yellows on a junction next to a school. There’s no way that can or should be redesignated anything, as it’s simply not safe to stop there as it blocks the view of children trying to cross. That should be something we can all agree on, but no, apparently not.

The working parents on here who drop and dash, have you tried leaving home earlier and finding parking further away from the school? School drop off isn’t the crack of dawn is it, so can’t you build in a slightly earlier leave time? As I’ve said up thread, when I had to travel a lot and make sure I got to work on time I used a breakfast club. To do that I left home at 7.35. What time do you leave in order to look for a safe parking space I wonder?

It's the same around our primary school. Parents park on the literal corner with double yellow lines and if they'd bothered to look there's usually a space a few metres away. They are double parked, over driveways, on the zig zags...everywhere. Sometimes the traffic warden comes and hands out fines but they do it the next day anyway. It's a losing battle.

Dp leaves at 8-15 ish and drops one at one school and one at the other. Then he goes on to work. As far as I know, he parks away from the school in a tiny village car park and walks. The comprehensive school has great drop-off and pick-up points.
I leave for work at 6 am when I'm in the office and arrive back at 7-8 pm.
The fees for the breakfast club were £90 per week for 2 children. That's not viable long-term for every parent. In fact it is absurd.
Facilities around schools especially primary need upgrading.
Or they need rebuilding somewhere more appropriate for modern society.

You being busy it not an excuse for children's lives in danger.

I’m sorry @RedAppleGirl but I fundamentally disagree with you.

We are not going to pave over our villages and towns to create designated school car parks that will be used for 30 mins of a weekday, and actually may or may not be used because some “frazzled” parents may still choose to park on double yellows or across a drive to shave off 20 seconds on their “performance” commute.

More and more people work from home. This makes school runs markedly easier in terms of flexibility (not having to be there physically at 08:55). If you’re an in-person worker who turns up to a workplace: then the conversation needs to be had with employers.

Not endangering other children’s safety because someone wasn’t grown up enough to get an extra 5 mins from their employer to allow them to drop off their kids safely.

Facilities around schools especially primary need upgrading.

problem is every time they upgrade roads, more congestion is the result. It’s a bit like solving the obesity crisis by putting an extra hole in the belt to hold the trousers up

differ solutions need to be implemented

perhaphs if the majority of children walked or cycled then the roads would be safer and then more children could walk and cycle.

lically we have a few active travel buses for walking and cycling

but some parents are scared as the drivers are dangerous….so won’t use these methods

Walking depends on how far away you are from the school. DP has a double drop of secondary, then onto the primary. The whole journey is a 13-mile round trip. The first drop is 5 miles away, then 4miles, then back home.
The idea that people are going to waltz to school without a care in the world because it naice for the children and the environment isn't realistic.

This!

My SIL and her husband lived in a house near a school. The house was down a long narrow driveway between 2 other houses and couldn't be seen from the road.

Nearly every day in term time, he would either be blocked in or blocked out of his drive by people dropping off their kids at the school.

One day, he got out of his van and asked the parent parked across the drive to move, because he needed to get to his house. The parent insisted that there wasn't a house down there and refused! They then put signs on both walls at the entrance saying "Private Drive - Access required 24/7"

A few days after that, their daughter had to get someone to move their car so she could get to work. Unbelievable!

RedAppleGirl You’re missing the point

the secondary school children could be riding to school solo, no need for anyone to be taking them if the infrastructure was put in place.

Instead of car parking put into already tight streets around a primary school, which is what you see as the solution

I'm not missing the point. There are not many children going to be riding to school. Where we live there are 2 hills en route which are used for international cycling. No one's children are going to be riding a Tour de France before and after school.
Apart from this fact, transport is used to make other journeys in the meantime. Bundling the journeys together.
This idea of riding to school or increases in cycle use is the exact kind of limited thinking and budget-wasting councils embrace. Which end up costing money, and lives, and are a monumental strain on our villages, towns, and cities' road networks. Absurd.
The school's issue needs looking at, we could have time-limited parking, however that would need parents to actually just pick up the children quickly.
Tbh some schools also need rebuidling-modernizing, part of that would mean adequate provisions for drop off and pick up. It's not the 1950s as Mumsnet keeps preaching.

Ilovedriving- I appreciate some life style decisions are made out of necessity rather than choice but I would do anything to avoid a long car commute that involved kids school drop off/pick up

Redapplegirl - increasing kids cycling to school is the complete opposite of limited thinking. Relying on cars for transporting kids is incredibly limited thinking, your behind the times

You're!

DS's primary was less than 2 minutes walk from a supermarket which was happy for parents to use their car park for drop offs and pick ups.

There was still a hard core group of parents who drove right up to the school gates. Even if there is the infrastructure for parking a significant group of people won't use it.

RedAppleGirl

strange then that children cycle to school in other countries with hills included.

your attitude that a child would be cycling 150 miles before school is ridiculous, a stage of the tour is not the same as cycling 5 miles to school - which is perfectly doable by a teenager, even including a 5% hill into the bargain and of course going home will be much easier as it’ll be downhill

driving 13 miles extra every day is not healthy for anyone, especially the passengers

I'd rather be behind the times than in cloud cuckoo land. The cycle to school initiatives will not be adopted by the majority. Do the parents then cycle off to work? Do the builders, and tradespeople cycle off to work too?
Do the food deliveries now come on a bike with a basket?
Do you understand parents will drop at school-work-pickup-go to any number of other engagements during the day before and after school?
Are we to cycle to these engagements?

There was still a hard core group of parents who drove right up to the school gates. Even if there is the infrastructure for parking a significant group of people won't use it.

This is where fines are useful, clear provision has been made and parents still ignore, time to adopt punitive measures.

Spot on.