Stop driving your kids to school

Both my eldest walk to High School, and yes, for about 20 minutes a day the roads in our little village are a bit congested with parents dropping their children off. Some do live less than 20 minutes away but we’re in a rural area with no pavements and the street lights are far and few between for the end of the day in winter. I drive my youngest to school with another child 2 mornings a week and her mother does the other 3. Then we both go on to work. I’m fed up of being judged! I dont judge any parent who drives, cycles, walks their child to school. I have no idea of the constraints of their day, time, family circumstances or finances. The assumption is that those of us who drive our kids are uneducated, lazy, not environmentally friendly and have obese unhealthy children who we drive around in “smelly cars”. We are a nice easy target for those that think they have a monopoly on how life should be lived by all. We all need reminding sometimes about good practice in all areas of our lives, none of us are immune to developing bad habits, and that includes all drivers. So why not give us the information, let us decide and stop making massive assumptions about our motives?

I drove my son to secondary school on the way to work for five years. It meant a very short detour for me and a very early start for him (40 mins early), but I would have done it anyway because children on school buses are not supervised. The few times he did travel on the school bus were not pleasant experiences. Some children just cannot sit on a bus without doing something to make someone else’s life a misery.

On one occassion, when the school closed during the day because of heavy snow, the bus terminated its journey a mile short of home because the driver judged it too dangerous to continue. This might be reasonable, but twenty or so children had to continue unaccompanied on foot.

You cannot on the one hand offer parents a choice of school and on the other blame people for choosing one that is not the closest. Besides in rural East Yorkshire you have to be very lucky indeed to actually live within walking distance of a school.

I would agree, it is not always practical to have children walk to school and while I have no objection to parents driving their children to school, what I do object to is the selfish attitude many of them have in finding it necessary to abandon ( I can’t say park) their cars as near as possible to the school gates in order to drop their children off!
The reason for doing this is a wish to see the child/children safely into the school gates and they seem to believe that as “they” only take a few minutes “they” are not creating a problem. “They” seem to forget “they” are one of many doing and thinking the same thing in the same place at the same time!!.
The fact that their actions cause danger to their offspring, and of others, by creating turmoil and blockages both on the paths and on the road near the school entrance seems to elude them! Parents pulling into non existent parking spaces, car doors opening and closing with gay abandon, children milling about; with other road users and pedestrians attempting to get to work etc. Recipe for disaster!!
The drivers don’t seem prepared to use a nearby Car Park or, if none is available, at least try to park in a safe manner and then walk a few hundred yards to the school gate.
Perhaps this is too much effort, takes too much time, or you might get wet?
The day will come when, for the sake of an adult parking safely and walking the child to the school gate, a child will be killed!
Again, when it is time to pick the children up, some “responsible adults” can be seen parking their cars at least threequarters of an hour beforehand so they can get the best space; as near as humanly possible to the school without actually being in the “No Park” zonel!
From that point, the queues of dozens of cars form, often in the most inappropriate, inconsiderate places, on bus routes,on pavements, outside private homes, clogging up the often narrow streets of housing estates, totally resricting the flow of buses and other traffic in the area.
Chaos reigns when the schools disgorge their pupils! The pavements above and below the gates are clogged with children, grandparents, parents, pushchairs and prams and younger children; all trying to spot “their” child.
Everything eventually overflows into the road where a lone Lollypop person is trying his or her best to stem the tide! A bus stop, placed conveniently outside of the school, has long queues of pupils waiting for a bus that is being held up by the queues of badly parked cars!!
While I realise this is only for a short time, twice a day, there are often 3 or 4 schools in close proximity ( as in my own area) and this is happening outside every school!
Driving during school holidays is a pleasure compared to term time, the volume of traffic being radically reduced!!
Come on parents!
For the sake of your children’s safety and well being; use your common sense, your brains – and your legs!!
While you are driving your children around so they won’t be in danger, you are leaving them less aware, more dependent and could be putting them in more danger through their lack of interaction with roads, people and traffic!!

Living 3 doors away from a junior school I have first hand experience.
Parents are the worst culprit as they jostle to park a car’s length nearer the school gate and then endanger the children on departing through the rest of the mass of children who are walking away from the school.

In the mornings they generally are not giving their full attention to the road as is evident by the way they are oblivious to other traffic trying to exit drives and the speed of the approach to the kerbside.

Afternoon pickup often results in obstructed drives and again parking nearest the school where the mass of children exit.

Until that sector of parents (many over weight) set an example by walking to a more sensible parking spot, say 100-200 metres away from the school entrance, there is little hope of their children enjoying a walk.

I don’t have children so this is not directly relevant to me but surely many parents drive their children to school to ensure they actually get there? It is the parents who are fined if their children truant so they are complying with their legal duty to ensure theit child is educated. As an earlier poster said there is not usually enough time to walk to the school and back home to collect the car and still get to work on time (08:45 as the earliest arrival time is stupid – one of my schools used to start assembly at 08:45) It would be better if the schools organised drop-off /pickup areas inside the premises (e.g. the staff car park) instead of everybody having to stop on the road.

As a parent of a 6 year old in a country primary school, I would love to walk her there when the weather is fine and my work permits, but there is no footpath on the busy road to the school so it is unsafe and especially so during rush hour. The school bus does not pass near our house, so if I did not have a car to drive her to school I would have to take a taxi there and back twice a day – as several parents already do.

I happened to live maybe a 15 minute walk from my school when i was a kid, but it did involve three instances of crossing a main road. My mother walked me to school until i was 10, constantly drumming ‘look both ways before crossing the street’ into me (something todays kids dont have) and then let me do it myself, although i now know she was following me anyway on the first few days, just to make sure. At the age of 12 i was put into a special school which was 17 miles away and other local students were taken in a taxi provided by the school in question.

The fact is school dropping off time tends to co-incide with parents starting work time. The car will be on the road whether its going to the school or not, most of them drop the kid off and then continue on to work, they dont turn round and drive back home again. So that ‘nine smelly cars’ will still be on the road, but presumably if they dont take the minor detour to the school you’ll be happy. And the only time i find it hard to breathe behind any vehicle is when its a Bus, putting out 60 times more nox gases than a car. Perhaps Which should launch an anti-bus campaign.

The real question is, why are Which and all the people in here so bothered about other peoples lives? How is where other people work, the car they use, their prefered means of transport, their kids, their family, their life etc anything to do with you in the slightest? Rather than telling parents to look at themselves, you should ask yourself what its got to do with you. They’re not doing anything illegal, this is a free country. Labour tried to make it a communist state but we got them out just in time. Why should people be hectored, badgered and served a guilt trip for living their life the way they see fit?