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.

You are definitely not being unreasonable- we live opposite a school and it’s utter bloody carnage. There is playing of parking within a couple of minutes walk but people are lazy fucks. Constantly block us in and something driving up onto the kerb at speed where kids are walking . I had a go at a guy yesterday as he literally nearly ran into a kid and he genuinely looked baffled as to why ramming up on a kerb at a ZEBRA CROSSING was unreasonable. The only kids important in the world are theirs - it’s a worrying state of affairs for the world.

Always the cunts in those discovery monstrosities. They probably live in a 2 up 2 down on a housing estate - god knows why they need something that size.

I’ve been on maternity leave for most of DD’s first year in reception and now Y1 so have been able to walk daily. I reported the ridiculously dangerous driving to the head a few months ago which did result in a school wide email. Our school has a couple of car parks and a pub we can use but it doesn’t help it’s up a big hill no one can be arsed to walk up, with tiny (and at some points nonexistent) pavements with few dropped curbs. I’ve knocked on people’s windows before to ask them to move but many times I’ve had to get the pram in the road. For our school what’s worse is the number of people dropping kids off and picking them up with no car seats and in many cases totally unrestrained. Again reported a couple of grandparents who ran a red light with three or four kids in the back literally hanging out the windows, no way could they have had any sort of seatbelts on, and sadly it’s not unusual to see that on the commute. The biggest school in our area (90 kids per year) has very little parking but is opposite a petrol station and people park at the petrol pumps and abandon their cars at drop off/pick up - the entitlement! 😂

Get the school to get the council parking warden out

Agreed, we live a 40 min walk (each way) to school
I dont drive and we walk in all weathers every single day of the school year
I cant count the number of times we have almost been run over by parents swinging to mount the pavement to park, not paying a bit of attention to the people who are walking to school
Only yesterday a parent who actually lives in the street the school is on, swings his car right i front of where we are walking on the pavement to reverse into his drive
These parents are selfish ,lazy and downright reckless
My child is year 5 so now allowed to walk into and out of school alone and even walk home alone if i let her.
No bloody way

We have a no loading/no stopping zone outside our school but does anyone pay attention . No
They all stop there to chuck their kids out before driving off
Pure laziness

I know someone who lives in the same street our school is on who drives her child to school every day and they are always late too
We manage to walk 40 mins to get to school on time in 5 years never been late once and we leave the house before 8am
I dont understand how people can be so unorganised

I live very near a school, and unfortunately it’s as you describe. The thing is, it’s usually the big shiny new cars where the parents act like idiots. The ones driving the little 10 year old ford fiestas seem to be the more sensible and respectful. I had a woman parking across my drive every time there was a drop of rain last term. She lives about five minutes down the road, so generally walks, but drives up on rainy days. I told her politely at first not to park across my drive. I then had to be firm and told her not to block me in even if she was ‘only going to be five minutes hun’. But no joy - just eye rolling and blanking me. So the first day this term I stuck a piece of paper on her windscreen with butter telling her not to park across my driveway. She was stood there when back at the car for twenty minutes trying to clear the butter from her windscreen, because of course butter is a bugger to get off glass without smearing. It worked though. She’s someone else’s problem now.

I like beside two schools. The most considerate and careful drivers are the 17 year old students.

i once saw a dad mount the pavement to avoid a queue of traffic! Outside his child’s primary school!

I get it’s the only action most 4X4s get - but bloody hell the driving is insane!

thankfully I leave for work at 7:30am and get home at 7pm so I only get to witness the Mathew when I am off work!

The school should be communicating and checking that considerate parking is maintained. This is actually most annoying for people who live near the school and are inconvenienced each day. I’d take down the number plates and pass to the school. It’s their job to make sure parents are parking correctly and so that children aren’t endangered. Get down to the school office to have a word.

🥱

We’ve had a child actually knocked over outside the school as he was crossing the road by a guy going at speed.
thankfully he survived but some people still drive like lunatics at speed right by the school.

I live less than 100 steps from local primary school. The parents are a nightmare-so many live within 5-10 minute walk yet they insist on driving round (often speeding) and park as close to the school gates as possible. I worry about the older kids being hit by one of their cars constantly too. The sit blasting music, have their engines on and part across gateways. School constantly remind parents but they just ignore.

It really isn't their job. What do you think the average school secretary or teacher is going to achieve? In the face of an angry entitled parent ? .These are public roads. They can send out emails and notices but they have absolutely zero power to enforce anything at all. What is needed is a traffic warden or three, every single day. Preferably in pairs.

But the big difference a no loading zone makes is that parking attendants can give tickets so it is worth their while attending.
There is some hope people may avoid parking there again if they get a fine. At our school it is the same serial offenders every day.

I love this. I’m now fantasising about leaving a note on buttery paper on the windscreen of all the arsehole pavement parkers round our way

I live opposite a school, parents park across drives, on drives, on private land and all over the zig zag lines.They also stop in the middle of the road and let thier children out pavement and traffic side.They climb the pavement where the street narrow so they don't need to give away without any regard for children and parents trying go walk home.Its crazy dangerous and selfish

We’re a street away from a secondary school and the driving/parking around our street/the estate at school pick up time is horrendous.

Slight change of subject but you see similar behaviour at the supermarket or the gym (which baffles me, you’re there to excercise so why not warm up with a 100m walk).

Don’t get me started. I live opposite a school and frequently have people parking across the dropped kerb to my drive and parking on the pavement to avoid the double yellows on the corner. They even park on the mini roundabout. The council created a footpath across the field to enable parents to park in the car park at the other side and walk across to avoid this. Parents won’t park there despite it only being a 1-2 min walk.
The poor lollipop man has cars parked all around him as he’s trying to help people cross.
I was once blocked in by an ambulance for 2 hours because they needed to attend a neighbour, and because of the way the parents had parked, they had no choice but to park across my drive. I had to get someone else to pick up my DD who had just moved to secondary and was too far for her to walk.
At one point we had PCSOs patrolling during drop off and pick up and it was fab.

YANBU. A 7 year old was hit outside a school near us by some twat who thought she could just reverse onto the pavement without looking (a wide pavement some idiots think they can park perpendicularly across leaving no room for wheelchairs or prams. Or people walking).

I agree OP, our local primary school sits in-between a preschool and a high school and the parking is off the scale.

We've had local councillors and PCSO monitoring on some days and moving people along but this doesn't help in the long term as they are not there everyday.

Many cars have mounted the paths to get round, nearly taking pedestrians out, myself included. I dread to think of the consequences of an emergency vehicle needing to come through.

Not sure what the solution is, I know local residents have been campaigning for resident parking zones around the school but nothing has come of that as yet.

The parent th at does a twenty point turn in a road where its all double parking and others trying to get past so they don't have to drive around the block. That gets my blood racing

Our school takes this v seriously. Head has emailed parents when they’ve received reports of dangerous parking and driving which is quite effective. Yes, not the head’s job but equally it would be so devastating if there was an accident. They are also vigilant at flagging ideas to the local authority about ideas to make things better eg more traffic warden presence, improving the visibility of zebra crossing etc

At our primary school had to install a gate which is now locked during school entry and leaving time to prevent cars coming onto the school driveway.

The school has a long driveway with gates on side paths where the children come out after school.

On a dull rainy day, someone decided it would be a good idea to reverse their car down the driveway to their gate scattering the children coming out of school and the parents standing waiting to collect them because they didn't want their child to get wet!

They've also had to paint double yellow lines on the junction with the main road as people were parking on the corners around the junction making it impossible for cars leaving the side road to see if the main road was clear. Cars still parked on the double yellows until they had a series of afternoons with the Police hiding in the school and then going out to ticket everyone while they were standing on the drive waiting to collect their children.

There's a community centre a couple of mins walk away with a big car park. They're happy for people to use it for school drop off's and collections but people would rather park dangerously nearer to the school than walk for a couple of minutes.

Complain hard enough, you might get a School Zone. Which is a whole new level of inconvenience for everyone, including you and your visitors.