[Closed] School Run driver runs into teacher

Sorry Steve, but your last point adds nothing to this particular situation.

I drive past a (primary) school to get home from work, it is after school finish, but the number of cars still parked at the side of the road is still high (and every side street near it).[b] The school was renovated a few years ago, and part of that was to re-do the staff car park. An off road waiting area would have been easily within the realms of design possibility[/b] to reduce risk to the kids for crossing the (fairly high use) road, between parked cars, and near industrial units so large lorries coming and going past. This wasn't done, which is a missed opportunity to help alleviate the problems for parents who have no choice but to drive kids to school. That doesn't mean, however, that those same parents can do whatever they want or park wherever they want because they are in a car.

That is my point .... the situation has been CREATED ... like I said (and Ms XtC gets parking as she's teaching staff) but Jnr's school simply refuses to acknowledge the problem and plan accordingly...
There is no way a supermarket for example could get planning permission without parking...

That doesn't mean, however, that those same parents can do whatever they want or park wherever they want because they are in a car.

The fundamental reality is parents need to get their kids to school AND need to get to work on time.
We are in a very privileged position in that Jnr gets to bump someone off the waiting list for pre-school club ... and Ms Xtc gets parking and teaches in the same school...

When she was working as a supply teacher this was an absolute nightmare... We can't drop Jnr off until 8:20 ... by which time she couldn't get to whatever school in time. Parents parking round the corner (legally) were returning to find cars keyed or covered in brake fluid...
and the school has a huge amount of space that could easily be used for dropping off kids.

HOWEVER .... why don't schools do this... because then THEY are responsible of for the inevitable.
Better to shift the accountability and if a child gets killed then it's not THEIR problem...

An off road waiting area would have been easily within the realms of design possibility

Big enough for all the people who want to drive their kids to school? I'd be surprised given pressure on space at schools. If not it's pretty much pointleas

The schools attitude is they need to start on time and how parents get their kids to school is their problem.

Everybody seems to be missing the point and where the real blame lies

I reckon it was those 2 kids on the bikes fault, its impossible to prove if they hadn't have been there this might not have happened

So where is the school bus these days? Or does all this freedom to send your kids wherever mean that it's made it impossible to co ordinate public transport to get kids from places not near the school to the school in a safe and organised way.

Well, I live next door Steve. What do you suggest the school does? Dig up the playing fields for parking? There isn't really any available space on site is there. Nearly all parents use the quiet roads to the rear of the school to drop their kids off.

The parking by the tennis courts is wasted space... there is the crematorium opposite which is also council land... and there is a huge amount of unused space round the back along Inkerman way that's part of the school... they could easily create a drop-off area off Inkerman Way... but then they would be accountable ...

Sorry I brought some humour to the tread.

Sorry I forgot to put a smiley on my post - I thought obvious "ambulance drivers" jibe was obvious 😉

It was sad seeing the replies to tweets about this taking the "teacher sat on the bonnet" line.

It was sadder seeing the replies here taking the "teacher sat on the bonnet" line.

Sorry I forgot to put a smiley on my post - I thought obvious "ambulance drivers" jibe was obvious

Oh yeah! 😳

My kids are year 4 now and week in, week out I see selfish parking and we had one incident last year when a fight broke out after one parent confronted another about their parking on zig zags on a crossing.

I do my little bit by photographing any asshat parking and forward it to the head who passes them on to the police.

Unfortunately I have to drive to school (despite having a school within walking distance, our school is the catchment school and is *JUST* inside the 2 mile cut off point where transport has to be provided by the school). However I always park up well away from the school (and the Selfish of Range Rovers) and walk in.

Anyway, if someone sits on your bonnet, you reverse quickly and it's their own fault if they fall on their arse. Any idiot knows that.

What's wrong with that? At my old place parking was crap, but it wouldn't be acceptable to turn up late because I had to park further away.

The problem is it's up to you to leave early enough for work...so if you need to park further away then leave earlier. I've been there and done it...

You can't do that with school as you are not allowed to drop the kids off early...

Big enough for all the people who want to drive their kids to school? I'd be surprised given pressure on space at schools. If not it's pretty much pointleas

Unfortunately I have to drive to school (despite having a school within walking distance, our school is the catchment school and is *JUST* inside the 2 mile cut off point where transport has to be provided by the school). However I always park up well away from the school (and the Selfish of Range Rovers) and walk in.

There's always a choice Steve, leave home earlier, arrange flexible working (if possible for your employer) pay for a taxi drop off/pick up, use school buses (if kids are old enough). They may not be great options, but they are options.
And I'm pretty sure the blame lies not with the school itself but with the local authority (council) as they are the ones who design and build, although I could be wrong.

.

What is that schools age range?

Senior school kids should be encouraged to make their own way, absolutely no need for the school run at that age.

You can't do that with school as you are not allowed to drop the kids off early...

Used to have more issues about parking/cars/arguments/traffic/car parks, than pretty much everything else combined when I was the Chair of Governors of a local primary. People can get very weird about it, and it causes no end of issues. I think its a combo of rushing, protectionism, kids, and traffic. Brings out the worst in otherwise regular people.

The fundamental reality is parents need to get their kids to school AND need to get to work on time.

Isn't that just part of the adjustment people need to make as parents?

There are no pre or post school clubs available at our local school, so we had to adjust our jobs to flexi and part time, as well as employing a childminder.

Our kids only get picked up once a week by car, and that's just so we can get them from school at 3:20 to a piano lesson 5 miles away at 3:30

the school has a huge amount of space that could easily be used for dropping off kids.

The closer you get to school, the more kids there are running about, so the greater danger there is that one of the little darlings will get squashed.

Seems likely that actively encouraging people to drive into school grounds would increase the casualty rate.

There are other options. I walked to school every day when I was a boy. At high school I had the choice of walking a couple of miles, cycling or catching the bus.

Frankenstein - Member
Shouldn’t have sat on bonnet but stupid parent deserved 10 months of sore bottom

Do you mean he deserves to be raped?

[quote=Edukator ]Those accusing the teacher of sitting on the bonnet need to watch more closely. The driver nudged the legs of the teacher before he sat down - assault with a 1500kg weapon.

Well quite - I thought there had been enough hints, but thanks for making the point explicitly though as clearly somebody needed to. The thing is, even for those who think assaulting somebody is equivalent to damaging property and even ignoring the failure to follow instructions, the driver has already committed careless driving and assault before the teacher sat on the bonnet. But then it's standard "driver entitlement" to think that nudging somebody with a car is insignificant.

To some extent I think even if the teacher hadn't been nudged all those comments are rooted in car as a status symbol thing, which results in people getting worked up if anybody even touches their pride and joy. Which is also where the thought process comes from that a cyclist coming close to a car and risking scraping it is just as bad as a driver coming close to a cyclist and risking knocking them off.

and how long is your drive to work after dropping off the kids???

retro83 - Member

Do you mean he deserves to be raped?

Go on, try and hide your need to be offended just a little bit

The tennis courts take 20/30 cars. The crematorium is in use, so full, most days. The unused land on Inkerman? You mean the little nature reserve area? Realistically to have a pick up area, you need several hundred spaces, so that will be the playing fields gone. Or, the idiot who ran the teacher over, could have parked on raglan road, Inkerman way, or in the Surrey pub, like every single other bloody parent does.

So where is the school bus these days?

When I were a lad, we had about a 25mins walk to primary school, (short legs). The journey to and from high school (5 miles away), was by bus. I honestly can't remember anyone getting dropped off by car. Mind you, that was...ahem... a few years ago now. 😉

While I think the driver deserved to be punished for this dumb move, it's not a jail worthy "crime" when the jails are overrun with real criminals. It's a big fine and long driving ban. That would give them some instant pain and remove them from the situation ever again.

but do you believe a ban would really keep an idiot like that off the road?

Isn't that just part of the adjustment people need to make as parents?

Both parents working full time is a reality for most unless you live off handouts...I personally don't think it's progress... but its the effect economics... our economy now functions with a baseline of 1.x parents working, prices and COL reflect it etc.

Your lucky to be in a position where you have a flexible employer ... but even that is probably a function of what you do. Many jobs just can't be flexi hours...

There are no pre or post school clubs available at our local school, so we had to adjust our jobs to flexi and part time, as well as employing a childminder.

So how does that work?? How do you have flexi-time for example if you happen to be a teacher at a school 10 miles away - who is going to take the class until you arrive???

Quite honestly my employer would simply put you on a redundancy list of you even mentioned flexi-time...and employing childminder would make the finances o the OH working to be negative...

We did this last year but paid a friend and because OH was working in a nursery had to pay for out of term childcare. Last year we made a loss on OH actually working.

wilburt - Member

As I have said before we need some properly hard hitting information films putting cars and car people back in their box.

You're categorising "car people" in the same way others would do to "cyclists". That mk3 golf convertible makes me very dubious that the driver in the clip was any kind of car person. Same as the pensioner in the Vauxhaul Mokka who deliberately rammed me (on my bike) at the traffic lights.

Granted there is an over reliance on cars but people who like cars are no more or no less likely to use one aggressively. When I used to commute by bike the people who used to cut in or punishment pass were often mute when you caught up with them.

but do you believe a ban would really keep an idiot like that off the road?

[quote=nickc]Used to have more issues about parking/cars/arguments/traffic/car parks, than pretty much everything else combined when I was the Chair of Governors of a local primary. People can get very weird about it, and it causes no end of issues. I think its a combo of rushing, protectionism, kids, and traffic. Brings out the worst in otherwise regular people.

When I were a lad, we had about a 25mins walk to primary school, (short legs). The journey to and from high school (5 miles away), was by bus. I honestly can't remember anyone getting dropped off by car. Mind you, that was...ahem... a few years ago now.

Me too. It was a mile and a half. Probably 30-40mins or so with a bit of mucking about on the way. Everyone walked, mostly in groups of mates. This was junior school, so year 3 onwards, so our parents weren't encumbered with school runs on the way to work. We just went ourselves.

I walk my kids to school now, which seems ridiculous. They should be walking by themselves. No kids do though. I've gone bloody soft it seems.

When I was my sons age I walked to school with my little brother... now that is forbidden and you'd find yourself in front of child protection before you could blink...

Evidence? Has any parent ever been done for this?

[quote=stevextc ]This school has a huge amount of unused space and a drop off area the size of the ones at Heathrow would suffice and be a small part of their wasted space.

Sorry steve, I've ignored you before as I thought I needed to actually check the situation before commenting given you're clearly a local. So I'll attempt to answer lots of your points now. I'm not seeing huge amounts of wasted space at this school, where do you think there is some? Similarly the amount of parking looks just about sufficient for staff at a secondary school - there certainly isn't anywhere near enough spare to enable parents to use it, and nor do you want typical entitled driving parents mixing it on school property with kids cycling. The trouble with a drop off area is that it will just immediately become full of people parking, so unless it's big it won't do much good. As I wrote, typical schools don't have huge amounts of spare space, and if they do they don't have much money and land is valuable...

There does already appear to be parking on Inkerman way? What is the problem with that (apart from that the drivers presumably find it inconvenient to get to given it's dead ended)? The crematorium is an interesting suggestion, but I'm sure it's not all that simple to take land from there, and if it was land is valuable and councils don't have much money... What's wrong with the parking at the tennis courts?

Though all this is a load of whataboutery. Generally the reason problems occur isn't because it's not possible for drivers to do the right thing, but because they can't be bothered. We don't have a bad parking problem at our local school, but where people are idiots it's because they can't be bothered walking another 200m from the designated parking at the local Chinese restaurant which always has space.

What's more, the school in question is a secondary school. Kids don't need escorting into the school (I no longer escort my Y6 son). Either they can make their own way so avoiding driving altogether (how far are people coming from - our local high schools have kids walking/cycling from several miles away, it's 5 miles for us and there is a bus?), or there are plenty of places where parents can drop them off within easy walking distance, no need for a specific drop off spot.

[quote=stevextc ]I actually started off determined to cycle... spent ages on google street view and still can't find a safe way to get to this event... SO I'll probably have to DRIVE or not go (OMG)
If we do drive then we will doubtless drive on to Swinley after so he can get some actual exercise... and then DRIVE home ... but I doubt you ever felt so entitled as to DRIVE to Swinley..

I've driven much further than you to go to Swinley (far enough it really was impractical to cycle). I also often enough drive places that are within cycling distance. However it's not specifically the driving I have an issue with - it's the being an arse with driving there and parking when you get somewhere. I'm sure you're not going to be an arse so I don't see what you think the problem is.

Four bus tops within 100 metres of the school gates. About another four within another 100 metres. Just saying.

[quote=jimjam]You're categorising "car people" in the same way others would do to "cyclists"

It's not even that ... most of us choose to cycle....
When I have had an option I have not been a car owner at all...and out of these people vilifying "car people" how many own cars and choose to drive to some trails???

Re. the "sat on the bonnet" thing, if you watch closely, the car does move (slowly) into the back of his legs - you'll have all had someone kick the back of your knees out at some point in your lives and you know how that proceeds, simple physics at play. If you want to be overly critical of the teacher, at worst you might judge that when the car nudged his legs he might have been overly willing to let himself fall back onto the bonnet.

Personally that's not how it looks but I'll concede the possibility he didn't do his utmost to avoid falling backwards. Even if he did though, that's not unreasonable imho as in that situation, a car pressing into the back of his legs (I repeat, you can see the car move into him on the video BEFORE he "sits" on the car) what do you do? Let yourself fall backwards onto the bonnet as he might have, or try not to and then what? The car's still coming, if you're not on top of it there's a decent chance you're going under it...

Just for context and because I haven't seen it mentioned yet, the driver wasn't insured to drive the car and also it was sans MOT.

For further context there was previous between the protagonists, on a previous occasion the guy had ignored the teacher's instruction that he wasn't allowed into the (staff) car park and had driven past him. This is perhaps relevant to why the teacher physically stood blocking the driver's path.

In my view the appropriate charge for deliberately driving into a pedestrian and then intentionally accelerating with them sprawled on your bonnet is attempted murder.

stevextc - sounds to me like you own a black Golf with a dint on the bonnet.

stevextc - Member

and out of these people vilifying "car people" how many own cars and choose to drive to some trails???

Well that's a whole other issue - my nearest trail network is 25 miles away now. My point was that people become detached from themselves when you put them behind the wheel. All that matters is their journey and their car and quite often their sense of aggression or entitlement seems proportional to the size of their car/ inversely proportional to their own physical capabilities.

[quote=jimjam ]You're categorising "car people" in the same way others would do to "cyclists". That mk3 golf convertible makes me very dubious that the driver in the clip was any kind of car person. Same as the pensioner in the Vauxhaul Mokka who deliberately rammed me (on my bike) at the traffic lights.
Granted there is an over reliance on cars but people who like cars are no more or no less likely to use one aggressively. When I used to commute by bike the people who used to cut in or punishment pass were often mute when you caught up with them.

You're completely missing the point. There might not be a homogeneous group of "car people", but there are sufficient numbers of people driving cars with a sense of entitlement (I'm tempted to suggest a majority of drivers) to make it worth dealing with them as a group. Those who aren't an issue aren't an issue and such things wouldn't apply to them. In the context of wilburt's comment the bloke in the video and the pensioner who rammed you are "car people" - he's not referring to people who are into cars, but people who drive cars. Sure those who like cars are probably less of a problem (though possibly more likely to get aggressive at somebody sitting on their bonnet after they've nudged them), but there really is a pervasive general problem in our society regarding the attitudes to car use. It's so ingrained you don't even notice it and think things are normal.

It's nothing at all like the way cyclists are lumped together - that's used as an excuse to endanger cyclists because you once saw somebody completely different jump a red light on a bike.

edit: ah, seeing your latest post it looks like you agree with us. I don't think most of us are in huge disagreement on this point, there's just been a bit lost in translation.

No it's not attempted murder, there was pretty much no chance of killing the teacher and no indication that the driver was actually trying to do so. But given that the driver was already driving illegally, hardly any point just handing out the ban that some were suggesting.

I find it interesting how often these 'just a minor driving incident' people actually have a string of offences to their name. Normal, generally law-abiding, people don't do these things. Edit: even if they do sometimes exceed the speed limit when they think it's safe to do so 🙂

When I was my sons age I walked to school with my little brother... now that is forbidden and you'd find yourself in front of child protection before you could blink...

Bollocks. I often let my eldest daughter (7) cycle to school by herself while I walk her little sister.

Both parents working full time is a reality for most unless you live off handouts...

We don't.

Quite honestly my employer would simply put you on a redundancy list of you even mentioned flexi-time...

Then you'd live off the subsequent tribunal payments quite nicely.

You are entitled to ask your employer for flexible working and they must deal with such requests in a reasonable manner:
https://www.gov.uk/flexible-working

Last year we made a loss on OH actually working.

So.. quitting the job and/or moving to a part-time position would have been better?

and exactly what aracer is talking about here
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/never-read-the-comments-driving-idiots-content
Tax, Insurance and licensing along with can't I just run them over?

+1. The teacher made that situation a whole lot worse with his behaviour

By standing there and being hit by the car? Naughty teacher!

Maybe just get rid of the school entirely and turn it into a car park?

thecaptain - Member

No it's not attempted murder, there was pretty much no chance of killing the teacher and no indication that the driver was actually trying to do so.

He flies off the bonnet, cracks his skull and dies/has life changing injuries. Very real chance of death or brain trauma when your head meets tarmac.

edit: ah, seeing your latest post it looks like you agree with us. I don't think most of us are in huge disagreement on this point, there's just been a bit lost in translation.

Pretty much, I just don't see the label "car people" as being of any use when a huge number of people use cars and often act like dicks.