It’s 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. I’ve just finished a particularly gnarly piece of work and I’m looking to call it a week and lay back into some music and beer. The primary school opposite Foxy Towers is kicking out in a few minutes and the yummy’s have started to appear in their oversized SUVs, parking badly in the narrow lane outside, just up from the school entrance, so that Jasmine and Teejay don’t have more than 30 metres to walk.
The one parked right outside my office window has a truck the size of Wiltshire, still has the engine running, and is concentrating hard on her mobile, probably trying to find TOWIE on Neflux or something equally engrossing. She’s breaking two traffic laws simultaneously, and pissing me off into the bargain. I go downstairs and put the kettle on for a wind-down cuppa, look out the the back and yes, she’s still there pumping fumes and tapping away. So I stroll out and walk around to the driver’s window. “Hello, would you mind turning your engine off while you wait, please?” I ask, polite and everything.
The response, with a snarl: “Why?”.
She’s straight in the mental bucket marked “Bottom feeding oxygen thief”.
Now, I’m sorry, but a reply like that has only one result with me; I withdraw all consideration of manners and understanding, on the basis that the respondant must be a) profoundly stupid and b) so crassly awash with a sense of entitlement that I’m not likely to get anywhere with a reasoned argument and a gentle approach.
What IS it with twenty-something parents in cars their parents probably couldn’t ever have dreamed of affording, toting £900 mobile phones and getting snappily uppity cos I have the temerity to ask them to stop polluting my airspace? Twats, says I. Probably voted for Brexit too.
On today of all days. But I doubt she was reading the news.
The kids really can teach us idiot adults a thing or two.
I read about a school where the kids designed lurid Polluting Tickets, printed them out and went round at 3.30 ticketing the knobhead parents with their engines running. And again the following morning. Cue significant reduction in knobhead behaviour.
I used to take photos of the cars parked on the double yellows outside the primary school gates, and the drivers, and tell them I would be sending them to the local plod.
It took a few weeks, and I had to do it every new school year, but it did work. Up to a point. When the lazy cow who insisted on parking her Range Rover parked in the ‘No Parking – school bus only’ area, I would stand in front and block her in for a minute or two each morning.
How did I not get lamped? I made the Headmistress stand by the gates and film me.
I like that idea
In Canada, nearly all kids go to school on school buses. Works pretty well I think.
I used to walk to school. Walk!
I got murdered every day, inevitably.
You are Kenny McCormick and I claim my five pounds
You bastards!
We have a nursery, a junior school and a high school in walking distance of our home, and some of the parents and children do in fact walk past my window each day. Many choose to pick up their darlings and park in the street. It’s generally not an issue, but I struggle to understand why some of them park on the road when only ten feet away is a huge pub car park. There is no sensible explanation and as such no point trying to reason with them.
When in doubt I always ask myself ‘would I approach this person and speak my mind if they were a15 stone male who looks like he could crush me.’ If the answer is ‘not a chance’ then I leave it. It’s not worth it on so many levels.
My daughter is a teacher and had to speak to a mother of an unruly child this week. She came up with six (pathetic) reasons why it wasn’t little Jimmys fault. The seventh was ‘he’s a Scorpio ‘ 😮
It’s good to have that approach. Many times a male driver/cyclist shout at and confront a young female driver who has made a mistake. If it was a six foot male skinhead – they would have been quiet as a mouse. When people talk about casual sexism – this is one of the things they mean.
Don’t be silly. How the hell is that sexism? It’s simple not-get-your-face-punched-ism. Works just as well the other way round: skinny little twerp in his Vauxhall Nova, or 400 lb professional wrestler called “Madame Gristle” – who ya gonna hesitate to call out for being a dipstick behind the wheel? Thought so.
I don’t get involved with other drivers, too many head cases out there and you don’t know who they are until it’s too late. A colleague was hospitalised after getting into an argument with someone who cut him up. Another time, a client saw an argument settled when one driver slashed the tyres of the other with a machete.
Tangential one here, to do with quality of driving generally. I passed my test about 30 years ago, then promptly moved to London (public transport nirvana) to take a job with a salary so low the idea of buying any sort of car was pointless. For years I did without.
And then I married a woman who quite likes driving. So, I’ve never driven regularly.
Until now, given that she’s a bit poorly at the moment I now drive every day.
I admit I’m being hyper-aware and hyper-critical as I get used to daily driving at busy times, but Jesus H there are some fucking terrible useless fucking dozy maniacs on the road. How? I thought the test these days was meant to some sort of Tomb Raider style series of challenges and written exams?
Someone cut across me on a roundabout today and what with it being a warm day my window was open so I gave off with a bellowing ‘Twat!’ A brief cathartic rush soon gave way to a bit of shame at swearing out loud at a stranger. But, honest to God, its every day and every journey. Endless shit driving.
Have you seen the traffic in India? All bets are off. Cars are used to physically push others out of the way. Traffic lights and roundabouts are routinely ignored. Cows wander around oblivious to the mayhem they cause. Tractors are regularly seen going the wrong way in the fast lane. People jump from car to car, bike to bike, selling food or tat. It’s not for the faint-hearted but, somehow, everything seems to work with surprisingly few accidents.
Sounds like Naples (except for the cows).
In good old England, at least the cows have some familiarity with the Highway Code, don’t you know.
The roads are more full than they used to be with more and bigger cars. That means its generally more important that everyone is following the same set of rules ( not the one in their own head! ).
Following the rules means they need to be clearly indicated so white lines need to be renewed before they’ve completely gone and speed limit signs etc need to be uncovered when they have trees growing overt them.
There’s only one place on my route to work where I can guarantee hooting being heard every day and its a roundabout that needs the lane discipline observed… trouble is the lines are nearly gone and having half the drivers following the barely visible lines and half the hounds in the tarmac just doesn’t work.
I’ve been driving for nearly forty-five years. During that time I’ve made a few mistakes: finding myself in the wrong lane, daydreaming approaching a red light, missing the speed limit sign, driving into the back of another vehicle at a junction (twice, both minor, separated by more than thirty years), clocked for speeding once.
I think my record is pretty good but it’s nowhere near perfect.
😀
That’ll be because of the gloves.
It happened again today. On a narrow residential road. Me, proceeding along in what must have been plain sight – with sidelights on – when some dozy bugger, parked on the left facing oncoming traffic, simply started up and pulled out across me to drive off to my right. Emergency stop required.
FFS. Endless.
If he was facing you behind parked cars, the driver was close to the kerb and wouldn’t have seen you through the cars in front of him. He was hoping for the best in a 20mph zone. Begs the question why he was parked that way in the first place but my guess is he lives there. I have the same trouble in my road.
He wasn’t behind anything. Just wanged out in front of me, being a knob in a 20mph zone.
Ok. Definitely a knob then
A guy was stabbed to death after a car crash a few miles from here, three weeks ago. Four young guys charged with murder.
I take a good look at who it is before I start abusing anyone these days.
About 5 years ago a guy on a motorbike tried slipping past me on the inside just as I was turning left at a turning of the main ring road in my town. He’d been in my blind spot since following me out of a turning on the opposite side about 100 yards back. Somehow, he’d managed to switch unnoticed from being on the right-hand rear corner of my car to the left-hand rear. He nearly went up the kerb and was shouting and gesticulating as he passed me a little further on. I told him to F. off (a mistake as this enraged him further) and when I had to stop at a T-junction further down he pulled up across the front of me so I couldn’t leave, got off his bike and tried to open my door, presumably to attack me. I had locked all the doors when I saw him dismount. He then repeatedly tried to punch his way through my window, punched the door, roof and bonnet several times, permanently denting them, and eventually got back on his bike and rode off. Needless to say I had nothing with me to write his reg. number down and no camera phone with me. I reported the incident at the police station anyway, but it turned out that the camera on that junction was not in use.
It’s an increasingly dangerous world out there.
Isn’t that the point made above, though? “I take a good look at who it is before I start abusing anyone…”.
So if it’s (say) a smaller man, a woman or a child, that’s okay..?
I occasionally play the game of “If I don’t make eye contact, you’re not really there” when deciding whether to let someone out into the traffic. Even better on a sunny day while wearing sunglasses.
If it’s someone who’s done something worthy of abuse I will give it if I feel safe. i.e. won’t get stabbed or beaten up. Because there appear to be more uptight violent cunts behind steering wheels these days, I tend to wind my neck in a bit more and usually just seethe, then chill, instead of hurling abuse.
But if some future fucker blocked me in with his bike while attacking me, next time I’d drive over the fucking thing. And him if necessary.
I don’t really understand what point you’re trying to make, though.
I think the point trying to be made, is that it’s being suggested that it’s perfectly acceptable to verbally insult drivers (or even run over (motor)bike riders) you consider more vulnerable than yourself, but if a psycho cuts you up on the roundabout, you shouldn’t react in the same way.
There’s nothing wrong with prioritising your own safety, but to the driver in the other car, you’re the ‘uptight, violent cunt’ which has made them fear for their own safety.
Not if the driver in the other vehicle has already forfeited any right to consideration by being a fucking moron in charge of a vehicle, in which case maybe they’re just getting what’s coming to them.
If we ever get any police back on the roads (I haven’t seen one round here for years) I am all in favour of giving them the right to seize motors from ignorant and dangerous drivers and have them crushed while the owner watches.
If they make that the law, and then enforce it, I’ll stop yelling at twats who drive a tonne plus of steel without care for anyone else’s life or limb. Until then, wankers of all sizes and genders who are in charge of unsafely driven vehicles will get my abuse and I’ll take my chances, thank you very much.
I’ve been chased into a field by one twat, who was filming me with his phone while shouting threats of violence towards me. I’d had the temerity to remind him, politely and with the single word “Twenty”, of the speed limit – 20 mph – as he passed me at over 40 mph. I turned and asked him if he was going to post it on Facebook, in which case I’d look out for it (I lied) and copy it to the local plod. That shut his gob. Fucking twat.
“I struggle to understand why some of them park on the road when only ten feet away is a huge pub car park.”
That’s why I got so militant about it – the car park was less than 50 yards away. School entrance was at the bottom of a hill on a blind bend and pedestrians had to cross the road. There are only so many times I am prepared to be nearly run over by lazy drivers coming round the corner to drop off their little darlings on the double yellows.
When I asked (politely) why they did it, they’d say “because it is quicker”. I would reply “Well, then, I’m going to waste your time for a couple of minutes until you learn to park and walk like the rest of us” and stand in front of their vehicle.
It worked with all but one driver who, frankly, looked like they could do with some regular exercise.
Teams I work with are involved in decisions about the designs of new schools. They do what they can to encourage walking/cycling/public transport but have to acknowledge that if they didn’t put any kind of stopping point in place there are parents who would rather push their children out of a fast-moving vehicle than use any other option.
From the perspective of someone who has done this for many years – school pick up times can be a very stressful part of the day. Talking to parents, no matter how politely, can be counter-productive because many already feel judged and the less meek will often double-down on the objectionable behaviour because they don’t like being told what to do.
I think a word with the Head of the school might be worth a try. Perhaps get them to mention it in Assembly or send an email to all parents to be considerate by turning off their engines while they wait.
But sadly there will always be people that will do what they want, regardless.
Assemblies, emails, letters home – none of it works. In my experience, anyway. Head watching parents works up to a point. Local Rozzers handing out tickets works every time, but they only come about once a year.
Around here they tend to blitz particular schools where it is worst for about a week at a time or maybe two. It gets the desired result for a while, but it’s never very long till they start doing it again.
Never once had a lift to school in my entire academic life.
Walk to primary school every day, get a bus to the town centre and walk the rest to my secondary school.
Done all that, got the proof right here. Waste of time for too many parents; precisely the numpties I’m fed up with. If we still had a local copper who actually showed up locally, I’d ask him to intervene. But we haven’t seen him since January.
It kind of makes sense if it’s 1975 and you’re driving some shitey British-made car which can’t be relied on to start again without half an hour of Basil Fawlty-style damn good thrashing.
On the bus today I noticed that the driver turned off the engine at every single stop and every single red light.
Come on fuckers, starting up an engine again doesn’t involve cranking a handle any more, you just turn a key a few degrees. Even on a fucking bus.
AND THAT’S IN HULL.
EAST HULL.
I think some cars (vw’s?) do that (cut off the engine when stationary) automatically now. When I rent one it makes me nervous.
My Volvo (I know) and the GLWs Hyundai both automatically stop the engine when the car stops. Seems to be a thing on new cars. My 2006 Mitsubishi didn’t
Post 1975 has reached East Hull now has it? It hadn’t when I left in 1980.
My old fiat panda turned itself off every time I stopped. Indeed, so eco conscious was it that it did it also during gear changes.
We test drove one and Mrs. T was so freaked out by it stopping like that it went off the possibles list instantly.
I’ve had two VW with this feature. The current one is a DSG/auto gearbox and the engine restarts when you take your foot off the brake which means if I’m in London traffic, the engine often runs unnecessarily as the stick is in the neutral position. The previous manual box was fine and the stop/start never bothered me.
My current VW has a DSG gearbox and the Auto-hold feature and for some reason my experience is different to yours. When the car is stopped in traffic the engine stops and parking brake is automatically engaged. No need to move the gear selector to neutral, no need to trouble the brake pedal once stopped. When I press the accelerator the engine springs back to life and the appropriate gear is engaged. I’ve been impressed with this to the point that I became confused and a little worried about what as going on when Auto-hold was accidentally switched off.
I also drive a manual Ford Fiesta which kills the engine when it’s stationary, the hand brake is applied, the gear lever is in neutral and the clutch is lifted. The engine restarts when the clutch is depressed. I found this a little odd at first but I’ve got nicely tuned into it.
The aardvarkess has also adapted to both of these without problems and was also perturbed when the VW Auto-hold off went unnoticed.
I have a Golf and Mrs F a Scirocco and it just… happens. Nothing to be nervous about.
I drove a company pool car last week (another VW Golf) without it and only noticed when the engine did not stop in traffic. For a moment, I wondered what was going on.
What I have noticed is the auto-handbrake feature is not too smart when facing downhill. I sometimes have to flip the little lever to semi-automatic mode when in car parks to avoid rolling forwards.
My Audi A1 DSG does it too. It works well but I’m not entirely convinced it saves me any fuel.
Its not a new feature, I had a mk1 golf back in 1980 and it wasn’t unusual for the engine to stop as soon as the car did! Trouble is, it didn’t start again.
Another Golf DSG* here. In my experience the engine only shuts off when I keep the brake pedal depressed after the car has come to a stop [auto handbrake engages – what a wonderful invention that is] If I lift my foot from the brake pedal once the handbrake is engaged the engine continues to rumble away happily.
[should the engine shut off, it restarts once I depress the accelerator pedal]
* Don’t forget your DSG oil change every 40,000 miles. I was unaware that it needed doing until I had done 55,000 – yikes!
Mine’s a Caddy van although you’d expect it to be similar. The only way to keep the engine off with my foot off the brake is to move the stick to Park.
Are you sure he turned the engine off?
Around the country companies are introducing diesel/electric buses that start off with an electric motor and switch to diesel when underway.
Even on a new bus the shudder of the engine turning off is unmistakable.
Ah, those weird eco buses, that kill the engine at stop. Except I believe that some of the worst emissions are generally when the engine is starting up, so it might actually not be helping at all.
Most people drive to work in the area west of downtown Ottawa where I live and work. I can walk to work, but sometimes I drive because of weather or needing the car later. Even on this very short drive I nearly lose it with people jumping their turn at stop signs or pulling into the lane I am in without looking. My driving ability has, I think, improved 10 fold since living here just for my own (and others) safety.
I fucking hate cars in urban areas and would happily see an outright ban on them, the latest evidence of their deleterious effect only adding to the sense of urgency.
Indeed, that’ll be the latest evidence that my local parents are not aware of, have never read and never will read, and probably wouldn’t understand if they did. Experts, innit.
Another good reason why we must TAKE BACK CONTROL Bloody European experts. At least there will be no cars post brexit
Plenty of cars, just no fuel.
Not just me then. We live smack in between a large primary school (400+) and one of the largest secondary schools in Europe (2,000+), so you can imagine the scenes at 8.30 and 3.30. One evening there was some do on at the primary school and people were parked everywhere…double yellows, pavements, including across our drive….so up I storm to the school and harangued the poor receptionist about how I was going to ring the police and so on. I was invited in to meet the head (who I actually knew personally as I was a governor back in the day and had given him his first job) and he explained what they try to do in letters and notices etc. At the end of the day these people just don’t give a flying fuck.
Clutch fluid. That’s all I’m saying.
Time to end the disastrous education experiment.
To me this thread is very exotic and baffling. People drive their kids to school? I’ve never seen or heard of this where I live (Stockholm, Sweden). In the city the kids walk (with or without their parents/grandparents) or take the metro/bus. My friends out in the countryside send/collect theirs by school taxi.
I guess it happens sometimes, somewhere, I probably just don’t know about it (but it seems unlikely to me, never having heard of it from anyone, ever). So I ask the other Swedish Afterworders: is this a thing here as well and I just don’t know about it? I live next to two schools, one for little kids and one for older kids, growing up I never saw anyone at my school being picked up by their parents (not even walking them home, bar the first week of the first year), none of my friends around the country do it.
Yep, this is Eng-ger-land, where The Lion Roars and everyone knows everyfing an’ believes nuffink, spends a fortune on fake tan, ‘as fake leaded windows, plastic sheets on the fake leather sofa, a couple of L200s – one each innit – an’ two weeks on the lash in that Spain every three months, fake tan or no fake tan, stags in Budapest and hens in Dublin, bollocks to the speed limit, and tax? Wot’s that for, you gotta be a mug incha. Walk to school, my kids, you’re ‘avin’ a laugh, they go in the truck right to the door. No foreign ponce is gonna pedo my sprogs. LOADSAMONEY.
I’m really proud of my compatriots.
People driving their kids to school – this was becoming kinda popular in Germany, too. Especially in Berlin – where the school is rarely more than three street corners away. “Helicopter parents” is the local word for it. Last year there were more car accidents in “slow traffic” zones near schools than anywhere else.
The solution? This summer the city council introduced the “school ticket” – anyone who’s attending a school has unlimited free access to any kind of public transport: buses, tube, trains, ferry. With the added side effect that kids who are being dropped off by their parents are now regarded as twats, what with all the Friday For Future malarkey.
Helicopter is a common metaphor for parents over here too – distressingly it persists even at and beyond the child going to university.
Coming from a land of the ice and snow, it should come as no surprise to anyone that in Sweden we call them “curling parents” – sweeping a smooth path for the kids to glide along on the ice and hopefully hit the bullseye. 😀
Yup, hovering over their kids every movement. Helmets. The worst were at university interview days. you could spot them a fucking mile off.
Nothing more unwelcome in a university dorm than a helicoptering helmet.
That was my reaction too @Locust. I was embarrassed about appearing smug but what you say is true,
My daughter’s school is 4 minutes walk from the Metro and it is a very rare sight indeed to see a parent dropping their child off. Otherwise the kids are walking with (or when older without) their parents or quite often cycling.
Why is this?
Most kids go to the school nearest to them or fairly near.
Many parents travel to work by public transport.
Kärrtorp, the suburb where we live, is bursting at the seams with anarcho-vegan, feminist, neo-Trotskyite environmental activists. SUVs? Not a chance! We all weave our own bicycles out of recycled beer cans.
It’s the fault of the media here. One or two cases have convinced parents that their children are in mortal danger; an air of suspicion and mistrust has been established.
I don’t think there’s even the awareness of how quaint this is to outsiders.
In the real world, if you look at the stats children are more in danger from their parents than anyone else.
As I said above, as with the majority of my contemporaries, from the age of seven onwards I walked maybe a mile to school thousands of times (some of that time in the 1970s, I might add) and was therefore raped and murdered, and my vengeful spirit now addresses you all from beyond the grave.
HOO-HOO-HOO-HOO-HAA-HAA-HAA etc
Part of the problem is that kids don’t go to the nearest school, as they did when I was a nip. If they move house to another village or whatever rather than go to the local school they stay where they are, clogging up places for those who are actually local to the school who have to go somewhere else, leading to more traffic. Plus their siblings get priority so it’s not one place gone, it’s several. Also, because we have “choice”, parents choose the school they fancy rather than the nearest. I have less of a problem with this as long as it’s local-ish but still, proximity should be a significant factor. In France, you move house, you go to the local school, end of. It’s as much about being local and part of the community. Plus a lot fewer cars shuttling to and fro.
But doesn’t this punish families who are unfortunate to live near a school isn’t up to Ofsted’s standards? I’m sure most parents/guardians would love to send their children to the local primary/secondary school, but when there’s such a huge gap in the standard of education then it’s no wonder many of them don’t.
But isn’t that itself part of the problem?
The fact that the families who have the wherewithal to choose shun the “substandard” schools for their kids education tends to reinforce and perpetuate the low standing of those schools.
Having said that, I’m from one of the pre-Comprehensive generations that sat the “11 Plus” and thus when I passed I had my choice of three Grammar Schools and a Technical High School in the area, none immediately local thus all requiring bus journeys. Fortunately because my school choice (and each of the others) was more than 3 miles from my home I was entitled to a free bus pass.
If I’d failed the test there were 2 local “Secondary Moderns”, as they were known, within walking distance.
Surely the way to stop parents dropping their kids at school is to a) give free travel passes to all schoolkids and b) create no-stopping zones around all schools during the necessary hours and c) install cameras to catch and automatically penalise drivers who disobey.
I think a lot of the parents under discussion on this thread would not consent to their precious darlings consorting with riff-raff by using public transport even if it was free.
Friend of my daughter’s goes to a school 30 miles away (it is a rural area in French speaking Ontario). A school bus takes her (and several others from her home town), picking up others on the way.
I used to walk or cycle threeish miles there and back. It’s why I know all of the words to Bohemian Rhapsody.
I used to often cycle to my secondary school in the warmer, lighter, drier months. More scope for getting up to things on the way home with my cyclist fellow-pupils.
From the age of 12, on those frequent days when I missed the school bus, I used to hitch the 12 miles to school, as my brothers had done before me. Rural Cheshire it may have been and I was already 7’6″, but can you imagine that now?
7’6”!
Did you only accept lifts from cars with sunroofs/ soft tops?
I am exaggerating, of course, but I was 6′ at 12, topping out at 6’4″ a couple of years later. I can imagine drivers were more cautious and felt more vulnerable than I did, but back then you got a lift within 15 minutes every time. Like Moose says, by the tabloids’ reckoning, I must have been murdered and abused several times over by now.
Parents/guardians sometimes drive their children to school for all manner of reasons. None of which are to irritate any of you. Perhaps they simply live too far from the school to be able to walk; perhaps their nearest school is a C of E and they’d rather their child went to a non-secular school; perhaps the nearest school was oversubscribed and their children couldn’t get in; perhaps they need to get to work for 09.30; perhaps they need to take their children to separate locations.
Of course, there’s no excuse for inconsiderate parking etc, and it’s important to consider other people. There are even likely to be those who just can’t be bothered to walk, but I doubt every parent/guardian being discussed in this thread has the same political opinions as is being suggested, nor do I suspect they’ve the same low-brow interests.
All very well, but – and this is the case where I live, and is therefore germane to the OP – around here parents in droves shun the huge car-park at the local pub, 250 yards away, and drive along a single track road in order to drop sprogs off right outside the village primary school. When picking up again at the end of the school day, they often sit with idling engines for many minutes.
It’s all very well finding reasons to justify parents/guardians’ driving behaviours, but no one is saying you shouldn’t deliver or collect your children, just that you should do it with consideration and common sense.
BTW, locally gathered evidence here profoundly calls your last point into question.
We didn’t get into our nearest school, and indeed have to walk past it – and the pupils and parents going to and from it – on our walk there and back. It’s about a mile. We don’t drive because it takes exactly as long to get there in a car as it does on foot, and because I don’t have to then get to work afterwards. The irony is that the school has a bunch of resident parking passes which they’re more than happy to hand out as well as there being a number of 30 minute bays on the surrounding streets, but which still doesn’t preclude folk parking on double yellows, across car park entrances and/or with their magic cloak of invisibility enabled by their having their hazards flashing. It’s not so much the Chelsea Tractors and yummy mummies as the cab drivers, as it happens.
When I did a lot of collection/return of equipment in the 80s, hazard lights were referred to as “park anywhere lights”. Amazingly, I only ever got one ticket in 5 years of driving in The City and West End.
You didn’t get into your nearest school… well isn’t it for children?
Boom-boom!
The general reasoning seems to be the fear that little Tarquin will be abducted if he should walk as much as 3 yards out of parental supervision.
He also might meet other children who aren’t from the right sort of background.
I like how “the right sort of background” can be tooled to mean very many things.
Spike Milligan “I came from a dramatic background… the Somme “