Parents' parking around schools is getting more dangerous

[Nickynicks]

A large primary school on the crossroads of a major A road and a busy B road. Parents used to park in the Lidl car park on the opposite corner and walked. Now they have installed APNR cameras and touchscreens in the packing area for shoppers to enter their reg details.

Now these parents are parking on the corners of the crossroads, making it difficult for drivers driving towards the crossroads. I drove past the school about 40 mins before the school closed and parents were already parking in dangerous positions like the above.

Another school which is en route for a colleague to go to work says parents are parking cars blocking entrances to side streets/cul de sacs.

The only thing to teach parents that this parking behaviour is unacceptable is to hit them in the pocket - fine them.

I live near a high school and this drives me mad. Parents blocking my drive, engines running for extended periods, mounting pavements etc. I used to walk the dog around 8am - no more as it’s too stressful. I feel sorry for the kids walking to school who are put at risk by this pathetic behaviour from their classmates parents. Council should fine the bloody lot of them!

Err, not any more! Language has changed (for the better). "They" as a singular gender-neutral pronoun wouldn't have been acceptable fifty years ago, but it's common currency now, and more equitable.

If you are dropping off your children and going on to work, it’s not unreasonable to use the car. What is unreasonable is to sit in the car with the engine running for half an hour. If you have that time, in primary school at least, you don’t have to rush to or from work.

Its the sort of thing that the driver should end up on the motoring equivalent of the kiddy fiddlers register for, perhaps even on the kiddy fiddlers register because that is what they are, a threat to children

Have you spoken to the school? Get them to have a parents evening and show them horrific videos of accidents caused by shitty parking

Many years ago there were a lot of issues caused by parking at the scout hus at the back of my parents house.

It cvame back to bite the scouts however as they were refused planning permission to extend the building and rent it out for other things

Sex offenders register?

No. Have a seperate list by all means. That flags when you speak employment. Make it legal to discriminate against them when employing.

I see families driving to school all the time that I know live minutes away from the school, could easily walk in and don’t have a job to go on to. It’s pure laziness.

My child's school is in a city centre and so there is no free parking or
Housing estates nearby. Also can't afford to pay for parking twice a day for 5 days per week to pick her up. On top of this I have two other very young children who won't go into a pram and like to try and run so I park wherever I can close to the school because I've no choice and have to stay on my car until the last second

Never underestimate the selfishness of parents and parking near schools.
God forbid their darlings might have to walk 50 metres up the road and to hell with the wheelchair users and those using mobility walking aids and pushchairs, I'll partially park on the pavement if I want

Well parents at a local school currently have to walk due to roadworks. Amazingly everyone seems to be coping.

It's actually blissful.

There's a few with exclusion zones in our area now. They work.

A school in our built up area has a "walk the last 5 minutes" initiative which means kids being dropped off 5 minutes walking distance from the school. Of course if parents have time and it's needed they can walk the 5 minutes with the children but many walk by themselves/with siblings. It has all but solved the traffic problems and congestion and the neighbors surrounding the school are no longer livid.

You could have looked at a different school or make your younger kids go in a pushchair or put them on reins. There are other choices. So long as you park legally and with consideration though it's fine. On yellow lines, pavements or corners, or across driveways, no.

Those people baffle me and piss me off at the same time! If you have the time to get their so early, why can't you walk?! I remember dropping dd at breakfast club at 8am and seeing a woman parked in the very first parking space. She was sitting looking at her phone while her kids jumped around the back. They would have had to sit there for half an hour before the gates opened.
I used to live beside a primary school and now live beside my dc's secondary school. I also used to work part time at a primary school and couldn't believe how many of my pupils' parents chose to drive them instead of walking. The growth in traffic has been crazy over the last ten or so years. It is making it unsafe for pedestrians, particularly the children walking to school, which makes some parents decide to drive the children to school instead. Walking to school is far healthier for children and should be encouraged.

You can't be serious. Hike? Nobody is asking anyone to get the walking poles out and go over a mountain. I have commuted an hour on foot regularly in the past and was fine without a shower. I've also asked for a slight change to working hours to accommodate public transport schedules before being a parent and my boss didn't bat an eyelid.

It drives me crazy at our school which is in the city. We're a 25 min walk away and I know so many other parents who live a similar distance and they say things like "I had to double park" as though they literally had no choice but to make the road unsafe for every other person using it so their precious DC don't have to walk. Traffic near our school is so bad it's quicker to walk. For a brief spell I had a knee injury and had to drive (bus too expensive) and had to allow 30 mins to sit in traffic and then get parked in any of the surrounding streets. The school is always sending out comms and the head comes out and asks people to move their badly parked cars but it never changes.

Surely the parents who hit people when parking on the pavement should have been charged with dangerous driving? Because that's what it is.

I'm surprised councils don't home in more on this as an easy source of income. Cameras, fines, safer roads/pavements and money for the council seems like a win.

A shower after a "30 minute hike"? 😂😂

What?? Who would build a school on the side of a hill that needs a "hike" to get to it 😂

And if you need a shower after walking... sorry.. hiking, 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back, then you need to see a doctor for excessive sweating or some other weird cause

We had a bad accident outside our school at pick up time. A parent made a mistake when driving their new car that led to children and parents being injured. It was horrific and now there is school streets in place on that road. That was the first accident but one is too many.

We had an accident outside my school in the 80s. A boy got hit and dragged along the road by the car in full view of all the children and parents outside the school. He luckily escaped with 'just' a broken leg but many who saw were affected for a long while after. It's a school street now. It's not a busy road in the slightest, but lots of children and parked cars everywhere is never going to end well.

If you are dropping off your children and going on to work, it’s not unreasonable to use the car. What is unreasonable is to sit in the car with the engine running for half an hour. If you have that time, in primary school at least, you don’t have to rush to or from work.

I collect the dc a few times a week after work and sometimes I’m early (traffic is unpredictable). But I wouldn’t sit with the engine on & if I am early I will often just pop to the shops.

In London quite a few schools don’t allow you access to the school road at pick up/drop off times.

If the school is in the middle of town then almost no one needs to drive. These are secondary pupils so should be perfectly capable of getting themselves to/from school. They can walk/cycle up to three miles, beyond which the local authority is required to provide a school bus. That leaves clear streets for pupils with disabilities to be dropped off without the lazy ones getting in their way.

Report it to your council, they send out the parking enforcement officials. Report it to the council.

Why do secondary students need to be dropped off? Bus or walk?

If a walk makes you work up a sweat then you could probably do with walking more often.

Or a cycling bus: