School drop off C U next Tuesdays

[ItsOnlyRainFFS]

My primary school is right in the middle of a residential area. Loads of side road parking but for some reason a significant proportion of parents insist on trying to park right outside school gate. And when it rains it’s chaos! They will drive at 30mph, park across driveways, reverse right in the middle of the path crossings to obtain some holy grail parking space that saves them an extra 30 seconds walk. They are barely looking as they drive like lunatics to then drop their precious 5 year old outside the gate all the while risking hitting other kids. Year 5 and 6 are allowed to walk alone to school and I really get scared for them when I see this chaos. The biggest risk to these kids walking home alone is not some random stranger danger but bloody other parents driving!
I don’t get it!
AIBU to think these parents are total next level of C U next Tuesdays? And how the hell does anyone get them to stop being so selfish and reckless.
For info I work full time and regularly school run is a stress on top of work commute for me! I leave a couple mins early and account for parking a 1 min walk to school. It’s not exactly rocket science. I just don’t get the thought process that I need to park outside the school gate to hell with everyone else.

We live within walking distance, 10mins, to our primary school. It's a pit village, a victorian school surrounded by terraced houses. Parking is atrocious. School/LA built some park and walk car spaces which are NEVER used, always empty as parents fight to get closer.
They block access/view to the main road and by the school they park on the pavements which means those walking have to walk out on the road.
One day lady pulled ip as we were on the pavement , as she got out she opened the door(on the pavement) for her kid to get . When I pointed out how unreasonable this was as we had to stop, she said 'but if I dont let them out THIS side then they have to get out on the road!!' I actually laughed at her and said oh but 'its OK to make other people's kids walk on the road, as long as yours are safe!? How bloody ignorant can you be?!' I was polite because there were so many kids about but I was SO.pissed off.

I used to teach at a small village primary. Every point in the village could be at school in 10 mins. I do get that some people drop off and then head straight off to work so are in the car.
Every school had to do a transport survey to see how kids get to school. Approx 80% of ours came in cars with the majority of parents dropping off, not in.work. It must have taken longer to get them in the car, drive down to school, find a space, park, get them and their gear out and walk over to school. Never understood it.

I would put those stop cameras up like they have at airports - instant 100 fine for anyone stopping within a mile radius of the school, unless they are a resident.

The school can contact Traffic Wardens and ask them to attend occasionally. News that people have been ticketed will soon spread. (Sadly, the selfish, entitled behaviour returns very quickly when the Warden disappears.)

When I was fresh out of uni I rented a flat with a driveway on the same road as a primary school. It was awful. My car was constantly blocked in, not just during the week but also on the weekends as the school rented out their facilities for ballet classes etc. As soon as the 6 months was up I was out of there.

Years later me and DH found our dream house. It was gorgeous and I loved it but it was opposite a primary school and I knew it would be awful so we let it go to some other family to battle the inevitable inconsiderate parents.

Thanks for explaining what C U nect Tuesday is. I genuinely had no idea what it meant. Never heard it before.

Agreed with your post, but just say cunt, FFS.

Mine are now young adults thank god but yes it has always been like this. We had the police called and a Jeremy Kyle type scene outside ours where the driver of an Audi blocked a home owners driveway - owner came home and Audi woman would not move. It was a one way system so the cars just backed up when owner did not move aside and neither did Audi woman. It all got racist as the Audi woman was Indian decent and home owner white - a fight ensued between the groups whilst the rest of the normal folk stood aghast. Teachers tried to intervene but the police had to split them up in the end.

Audi woman was parked over the drive again the very next day.

Well there are four schools within about 3/4 mile of us, three primaries and a large secondary. We literally (and I'm using the word correctly) don't go out between 2:45 and 4:00 unless it's unavoidable. Parents are parking an hour before school lets out in order to get a space on the local roads (usually half on the pavement). It's insane. These kids seem incapable of walking, and any spot of rain doubles up on the chaos. It's clearly got worse year on year since we moved here twenty odd years ago. But unless someone actually gets injured by a car, nothing changes*.

*It took a child being hit by a car for a crossing to be put in. It took two years.

Honestly, school drop off parking gives me the absolute rage. There's a school near us that parents can drive in to and drop their kids off - but loads of them park up, blocking the drop off zone so then there's massive queues of cars waiting to turn in (you often see what are clearly teachers sitting in the queues) that then causes chaos on the roads around. That and the fact that people are parked on all the side roads - and there's currently a load of roadworks going on so their parking is often making it incredibly difficult for people to actually drive down the roads.

My childrens' school has two fairly large (free) public car parks less than a five minute walk away - the school send out endless messages asking people to use them and so few people do. Would seemingly prefer to block driveways, park/drive dangerously, stop directly outside the school causing queues of traffice, etc. rather than do a 10 minute walk to school and back.

We live behind a secondary school and from 8:30-9,3-4pm,it's insane

We've had people parking almost outside our front gate (just enough so we can't use it),on our drive or on the pavement and if you try to say something,you get a mouthful

I don't drive (dp does) and if I've been on the early shift at work,I'm back just after 3 (hes back around half 4 and misses it)

I have to get off the bus and play chicken just to walk down the street (the amount of times I'm forced to walk on the road,into the face of any other traffic,as there is no space on the pavement) and if I'm lucky,there will be enough room to squeeze through my gate

When I was at secondary,it was a cold day in hell when your parent picked you up,you walked there and back in all weather's,it was the done thing

We have tried to speak to the school but nobody is bothered

Best laugh is,the school have a massive car park but as it's a bit tight to move in when it's full of school kids,the parents park in our street-i just wish they'd be considerate to us who live here

HumerousHumous

Madness. Why can’t kids be walked to school.

I drop dh to train, then drive to a secondary, then primary, then go into work. I’ve always parked a little far away because it’s easier to walk to the gate then get through the ridiculousness of the cars at the school gates!!

Try being a person who lives close to a school. (And yes, the school was there when we moved, but has doubled in size since we've lived here).

Parents just DON'T CARE. All that matters is getting their child as close as humanly possible to the school gates as god forbid they have to walk. Parking over driveways, double parking, blocking people in - all fair play and if challenged it's always "i'll only be a minute".

Schools have zero power over this style of twattery, they can send out polite letters reminding parents to park with consideration, but they are usually ignored. Police have bigger fish to fry and cannot be outside every school twice a day.

Every parent has an excuse, every parent has a (usually rubbish) reason about how they can't possibly walk or park further away and walk because they are SO BUSY or so important and yadda yadda yadda. The truth is many of them could absolutely walk or park further, they just don't want to.

One thing I would do if I got a time machine would be to go back to 1885 when the motorcar was invented, and get it written into law in an unassailable, non-repealable way, that no motor vehicle may be parked on public land that is within 50 metres of any building except for police, fire and ambulance vehicles. All parking must be on private land specifically dedicated for the purpose unless e.g out on a moor where you aren't causing an obstruction. Over the past 140 years our entire culture has accepted the notion that it is reasonable for people to leave a ton of metal to clutter up the public highway, and when it was only the richest 1% that could afford a vehicle that didn't matter, but now that there are half as many cars as there are people, and each car takes up as much space on the riad as 10 people, the whole public sphere is sp dominated by these lumps of metal and leaving no room for people. If that had never been considered reasonable, all hubs of busy people's lives would automatically either be built with sufficient off-road parking or served by sufficient non-car transport options. Because people know that they can, entirely legally, leave their ton of metal in public spaces without a care, they have structured their choices of home, job and schooling for their children to make it absolutely imperative that they exercise that right.

My DS old primary had an agreement with the Leisure centre opposite that they could use their big car park for dropping and picking off kids.

Unfortunately some entitled toddlers started parking in the disabled bays as it was easier to get off the car park. Despite warnings from the head that this arrangement would end if it carried on they still did it. The same sets of parents every time.

The last straw for the leisure centre was when one of the dads was challenged by someone needing the bay and he told them if they were that disabled they wouldn’t be going to a leisure centre!!!!

so the arrangement stopped and the same parents block drives and drop off on the yellow lines. It all came to a head when one of them clipped the lovely lolly pop man with his car as he tried to go round him. The police got involved and for a while everyone parked better but it’s creeping back now. Just glad my son is no longer there. My nephew still is so we there and my sister in law parks about a mile away and walks up to school.

Depressing to think this has gone on for years and all over the country

Yes, agreed.

It's also depressing that some people can't just write the word CUNT and be done with it.

Is there single yellow lines? Our school often have the council parking officers outside and they fine anyone doing this. That keeps them at bay for awhile. There's always a couple of idiots that chance it but most don't fancy a parking fine.

Entitled toddlers!!!!! How the hell did I manage to put that. I obviously meant parents.

Oh I dunno.
Toddlers are eternally entitled beings.

🤣

Because they behave like toddlers.

Speak to the Head teacher and ask them.to contact the road policing dept. Get a traffic warden/community police officer down to observe the situation. My kids primary had an on going issue with parents parking on the yellow zigzags. Letters from HT had no effect. Eventually, exasperated, the school got a traffic warden to attend at from 840am.and they ticketed the whole lot of them. Same at 3pm, all got parking fines 😆 it soon stopped 🤣

Same here - the business over the road literally opens their gates at school run time to let parents park in their car park, officially and safely, proper agreement with the school. Neanderthals still insist on parking on the zigzags right outside the gates to save a 30 second walk. So brainless. The school can’t do anything about it apparently other than get fluorescent and very noticeable parking enforcers out from the council once a term. So obviously they never catch anyone as they are very visible. On those days, the Neanderthals do magically manage to park properly it seems! They’re pure lazy.

The HT of the school that's on our street is relentless with parents about parking after an incident a couple of years ago when an ambulance couldn't get to a house because of cars abandoned for drop off.

She arranged with the pub for parents to use their car park. It's literally a 2 minute walk. There's also a walking bus staffed by school staff (who kindly volunteer) twice in the morning and twice at the end of the day. So zero need to park anywhere else.

She quite happily puts in the news letter and on the Facebook page for owners of reg Nos to contact her for assistance at pick up and drop off. People are mortified at the implication they need assistance so there's is far far less shit parking on the street since she started.

She also randomly patrols the street if things are getting bad and directs parents to the car park.

Someone rather sharply said to her once "you care more about parking than uniform" (a few parents don't like her post Covid changes to uniform) and she replied very bluntly "uniform isn't going to kill anyone, bad parking almost did"

We had Chelsea tractors parking on top of flat gravestones in the churchyard next door to our primary school. It was at that point in time I gave up on expecting decent behaviour from some parents. 🤯 There was also a stand up row or two between parents about a parking space. In front of their children.

🙈🙈🙈🙈

Depends if they are just stopping to let their kids get out, or parking and getting out of the car themselves.

I love her!