The Horrors of the School Run

Edrof

Edrof

Edrof

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Yesterday, having dropped off my oldest loin-fruit at school I saw a four or five-year-old boy in a 4x4's driving seat. He was having a fun time playing energetically with the switches and steering wheel. The car's engine was running, I'm pretty sure there was a baby in the back seat and the parent was nowhere to be seen...

A more responsible parent than I put his head in and told the kid off.

(I mentioned this in another place but I don't want to derail that thread so I've started a new topic.) Perhaps I have a particularly awful school run, and this isn't the first incident of note. It's a very busy time and the pavements leading up to our school are single-track in many places. That doesn't stop parents bringing their golf umbrellas, packs of dogs, kids riding scooters and bikes. Many of them don't move their kids out of your way either and you end up having a multitude of tiny games of chicken. Some stop to have lovely long conversations IN THE ACTUAL ENTRANCE. The amount of people that literally have no spatial awareness is genuinely staggering to me.

Then there's the parents with cars: parking on pavements, parking across driveways, parking on double yellow lines, parking on the zig-zag bits, parking at the entrance of junctions.

One yummy mummy parked across an old folks' home's entrance and denied an ambulance access a few months ago. Another, only last week, reversed onto the pavement in an attempt to parallel park and knocked a woman over leading to her being admitted to hospital.

But it can't be just me - does anyone else have anything to report? Share your stories and make me feel better.
 
Last week I stood next to 3 mums all talking about thrush whilst I waited to get my children into the class room.

One said "when mine is bad, I can literally have my hand down there having a good scratch all day long"

Choice
 
i hate riding past schools during the school run it's dangerous as hell and not one bit of that danger comes from the kids.


it's like the parents actively are trying to endanger their kids lives.
 
Every day this rubbish and I tend to find there is a direct relationship between the cost of the car, the yummyness of the mother, the wage of her "partner" that she constantly mentions and the subsequent inconsiderate behaviour shown to the rest of the human race.

One mum last week pushed the kid out of the obligatory black Range Rover and the kid threw up. If that was me I'd have held the kid and comforted them took them home and tucked them up in bed. But no she pushed the kid told the kid to get into school because "I need to get to work and you're just messing it up so just get in there".

And last year kid on a scooter crashed into another kid on a scooter in front of me. They both went into the road I picked them up checked they were ok about 30 secs later a mum ran upto and said "Thank goodness you were there" she then gave me a filthy look when I said "Maybe you should have been and not 100m down the road." The kids were in reception uniforms.
 
Right, my lad walked to school (but kids were made of stronger stuff back then... *cue Hovis advert music*) but as I cyclist I can say that there is no more dangerous time to be on the roads as during school run.

It's like all decency & common sense and awareness of space and rules of the road go out the window. Breeding doesn't make you stupid so why does it seemingly make such scenarios so common nowadays?
 
There is a school near me which is on a narrow two lane country road with busy traffic. One lane becomes blocked with 50+ School traffic parked up, the two way traffic has no way through so every morning and afternoon it becomes a no go zone.
This time of year is especially bad because the side ditches cannot be used as gaps to let the traffic through, however there is always someone who tries to and gets stuck meaning it's hours before you can get past.
 
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As I mentioned in the other thread I used to live next to a school. My house was about 50m away from the back gate which put it about 300m away from the front entrance. My house was on the only road in to the rest of the estate.
Would frequently see people who lived in the estate drive to drop off their sprog and then drive back past to go home. This meant they lived about a maximum of 600m walk from the front entrance.
The only traffic the kids would have to contend with was other parents driving their kids to school!
The standards of parking were the biggest thing though, and the strange need for mothers to drive as large a car as possible meaning they made the roads impassible and took up more parking space than they required. They'd frequently park over the main road meaning nobody could get in to my estate. Total goons.
 
The school run is a genuinely good reason to not have children in the first place. You will not meet a more selfish, unaware, and downright vacuous group of people than parents dropping off their little darlings. I haven't seen the dangerous stuff some of you have mentioned but I'm not surprised in the slightest to hear it.

The funny thing is that all the other parents - the ones we're judging - must be thinking the same thing surely? It can't just be us select few?
 
JOSH86 said:
Last week I stood next to 3 mums all talking about thrush whilst I waited to get my children into the class room.

One said "when mine is bad, I can literally have my hand down there having a good scratch all day long"

Choice
Click to expand...

could have offered a helping hand no?
 
[FnG]magnolia;27554434 said:
The school run is a genuinely good reason to not have children in the first place. You will not meet a more selfish, unaware, and downright vacuous group of people than parents dropping off their little darlings. I haven't seen the dangerous stuff some of you have mentioned but I'm not surprised in the slightest to hear it.

The funny thing is that all the other parents - the ones we're judging - must be thinking the same thing surely? It can't just be us select few?
Click to expand...

No. They're ignorant morons so haven't picked up on it. OR - they know they do it and just don't care because they're too self important.
 
Dis86 said:
The standards of parking were the biggest thing though, and the strange need for mothers to drive as large a car as possible meaning they made the roads impassible and took up more parking space than they required. They'd frequently park over the main road meaning nobody could get in to my estate. Total goons.
Click to expand...

I immediately hate anyone who decides they need a 4x4 in a city or town.
 
Some nice parking:

lNVZmtyl.jpg



[FnG]magnolia;27554434 said:
The school run is a genuinely good reason to not have children in the first place. You will not meet a more selfish, unaware, and downright vacuous group of people than parents dropping off their little darlings. I haven't seen the dangerous stuff some of you have mentioned but I'm not surprised in the slightest to hear it.

The funny thing is that all the other parents - the ones we're judging - must be thinking the same thing surely? It can't just be us select few?
Click to expand...

Is it the same over in your hemisphere then, old chap? I'm probably viewed as grumpy, but I never block anybody's way, won't run anyone over, refuse to drive when we live ten minutes away, say thanks to people who let me pass, and have trained my little angel to neatly drop into a single-file at a single command. Seriously, we're like the Red Arrows.
 
It takes me 10 minutes to walk my son to school (aged 5) from my house. Yet my school run is filled with people further up my street who drive to school. My neighbour who works from home drives his to school in his year old BMW. Even forgetting the constant short distance drives I think it's madness sticking your expensive car anywhere near primary school children and scooters :D

My run is also filled with single track pavement filled with school run mums gossiping and blocking the way. The driving at our school they have tried to stop and their are people who take the **** on short runs but in the main we have created a family environment where two parents have to work so kids get dropped off on the way. When I was a kid next to no one's mum worked and the cars few and far between. If that's how family life is now then new schools should be built with a drop off area.
 
I have simular problems.

The road outside is very narrow and there is a group of people that ALWAYS stand on the wrong side of the railing so she's right on the edge of the curb and block the way when she's got her head in someone's car probably talking about estenders. One day I'll end up hitting her with my wing mirror and I won't be saying sorry.
 
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