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.

Yup it’s crazy. People who park on yellow lines, block junctions and driveways to be 10 metres closer to the school gates. Insanity and selfish beyond belief.

We live on the next street from the school, 5 minute walk, yet my neighbours will still drop their 6 year old off in a car.

You can tell some of the dads spend a lot of time at the gym. Ffs put the muscles to good use and park further down the street and walk!!!

The parents at my children’s school are exactly the same. Tiny roads near the school, and all these entitled arseholes want to park as close as possible to the school. There are also double yellow lines which they all park on, and that means their vehicles block the view of pedestrians trying to cross the road and the view of people who are driving who can’t see who is trying to cross the road.

They block residents’ driveways every single day and even when school send messages out to parents telling them to cut it out, they still do it.

One dad once shoved and threatened a traffic warden when one turned up out of the blue.

I’ve seen parents effing at each other when they believe they have the right of way on the tiny narrow roads and they’re all fighting to get away quickly after drop off. Ironically, the people who park on the main road who have to do a little 2 minute walk drive away with no problems while the arseholes parked right next to the school are getting all worked up because they have to wait for someone to move out of their way.

It is probably chaos around every school in the country to be honest. Your best option is to approach your council and suggest a survey regarding road safety during the times of school pick up and drop off…….i agree, it’s only a matter of time before a child gets injured or killed and that will be one child too many. Speak to the HT and get them on board too.
Why people cannot walk a short distance just amazes me…….i know the weather is often a factor but what price do we put on a child’s safety just because of a drop of bloody rain???

That depends where you live. In the borough where I work, schools are entitled to one PCSO visit per term.

Ask your school to set up a School Street. Depending on the local authority, there is often funding available for this:

Government guidelines to make school runs happier, healthier and greener | Active Travel England

Dds school takes pictures of selfish & dangerous drivers and encourages others to do the same. The school then name & shame in the monthly newsletter 😄
(ok, they don’t name them, but you can clearly see the no.plates & I’ve recognised some)

Our school run is a 20 odd min walk - so I see a LOT of terrible and inpatient drivers, people looking at their phones when driving, aggressively revving the engine waiting for the lollipop lady, driving off before kids have even finished crossing the road.

Some cars park so far in on the pavement, if you have a pushchair or use a wheelchair , you’d have to go on the road. Or they park right on a corner as you cross the road, it’s so dangerous, as you can’t see cars coming. Cars parking in the bus stop, despite the school repeatedly asking them not too. It doesn’t matter if it’s for 20 seconds. Just don’t do it. There’s plenty of parking further up the road but god forbid, they would have to walk a minute or 2.

It also damages the reputation of the school who work so hard to keep a good relationship with the local community - this often gets overlooked by the idiot drivers.

I’ve long come to the conclusion that people who drive like this including selfish parking etc are just wankers and not people I would ever be friends with or want to be associated with.

It is absolutely not worse than saying it. Skanky word 🤑

I live next door to a secondary school (1100 little darlings when school is full). I've called Parking Services from the council out numerous times in the 25 years I've lived here. It stops the Twatty Parkers for about a week.
When DS was at primary school there was a woman who was always parking on the only vehicular access to the school. It was clearly marked with box junction markings and a sign on the gate saying "no parking- emergency vehicle access only". I once took her to task and asked her not to do it. She responded "I'm only here for 5 minutes ", so I replied "5 minutes is all it takes for a fire to take hold with your DC inside ". "Oh, I hadn't thought about it like that ". She never did it again.

Our local school (very close to my home) have an arrangement with a large car park 5 minutes walk away but people prefer to sit in all the chaos around school than walk from this car park. Pure laziness. The Head told me years ago that ideally she would not allow cars anywhere near the school and they should all use this car park.

I have seen so many near-misses over the years.

This is interesting. How is this enforced? Signs and road markings? Has it pushed the parking chaos further out or do more parents walk their children to school (from home)?

I am amazed at the number of locals who drive to school. Honestly to me, it's more hassle to get the car off the drive and try to park than it is to walk short distances!

In London we have school streets schemes. If there is a school street scheme for your school then between 8.30 and 9.15am and between 3 and 3.45pm cars are banned from the road the school is on. Are there other councils in other parts of the country that do this? They clearly should!

Oh just seen the previous comment. Yes it is enforced with signage and cameras. If a car drives on the street in the forbidden times it gets a fine. The scheme near my house has caused chaos in adjacent streets though so we are trying to get the scheme extended to cover those roads as well.

Our local has no car zones between hours of school pick up/drop off, isn’t enforced though so it doesn’t stop anyone, it’s literally hell on earth, parents in cars regularly driving on pavements because of the traffic and not wanting to wait, been several collisions, it’s one long main road and it backs up the whole road for an hour, no busses can get through or anything. Absolutely ridiculous.

😆 I was actually trying to work out what C U next Tuesdays meant as I'd never seen it used until now!! Now I know and yeah just say cunt. It's a great word.

No idea why anyone would chose to drive their kids to school unless they have additional needs.

It's rife amongst the hugely popular schools with minute catchment areas around us. Funny that you will have to live within 0.4 miles to the school but it's vital that you drive there. I don't believe for a minute that everyone just have to drive the kids to school and then drive to work.

Or just use another word altogether 🤷🏻‍♀️

Horrendous. Poor little girl and her poor parents. All because of some selfish woman in an SUV who thought she could ignore the rules.

Yup. My DD is nearly 30 and this sounds very similar. In our case there was a church just round the corner with a big car park which was made available for parents to park in. Didn't stop selfish idiots driving as close as possible to the school gates. Also, despite numerous requests from school and occasional visits from PCSO, many would still park on the bus turning circle. This meant when the school bus arrived it couldn't pull in properly and ended up blocking the road which led to further traffic chaos.

I get that some parents were going to work. So was I! With planning it was still possible to park considerately and walk the rest of the way.

At DD's school with a similar catchment there's a sizeable number who have got their first child in then moved away knowing they can get the rest in on sibling priority. They cannot possibly account for all the cars at drop off though.

secondar School parents are even more entitled, apparently it’s ok to stop on a main road without even pulling over and let your child out - there’s 1200 students, a rainy days this selfish behaviour causes 1-2 mile traffic jams and the school don’t even care, they don’t reply to my and other’s emails. I have to go past every day because the shortest way to work (6 miles quicker) turns next to the school. It’s semi rural so many do need to come by car, the school need to allow parents to drop off round the back, they locked this entrance!

I drove this morning because it was pissing down with rain. It was busier which is to be expected but the parking was even worse today. Several cars parked on a bend on double yellows, cars fully on the pavement all for the sake of saving less than a minute.

I choose to park outside a row of houses further away because it's easier to park for a start and it's legal. I'm still dryer and saving more time than I would be walking and not much wetter and saving barely any more time than if I were to park like a knob. I'm sure someone will be annoyed that I'm parking outside of their house but much better to do that and risk annoying someone than getting a ticket.

Now it's dried up I'm walking because it's good exercise and I really need it!

Because they know it's selfish but don't give a shit and know they would be criticised to the ends of the earth if they admitted it.

But to those that do it and are reading this and not posting to admit it - you're selfish gits! The world doesn't revolve around you and you're not more important than anyone else!

I lived opposite a primary school for many years. The number of people who’d park ON my driveway, never mind across it! There were single yellow lines with waiting restrictions and that part of the street was one way which was ignored all the time. The abuse we’d get when we needed to get on/off our drive was off the scale.

People would start parking more than an hour before pick up so they could get a good space. I remember there was a van belonging to a painter/decorator who’d do that and I just happened to be at my parents house one day when he came to give a quote for some work. I recognised his van as a long term parking person and told him that he wasn’t getting the work from us, even though he’d given a very good quote, and the reason was that I knew he would down tools by 2pm so he could come and park outside my house for the school run and we’d never get a full days work out of him 😂

You'll never, ever change the entitlement of these people