The most frustrating drivers you come across on the school run

Unfortunately, what it also means for any parent who does the school run, is the beginning of another year of pain.

While walking, biking, or public transport are options for some families, for others, school drop-off and pick-up depend on their vehicle and patience (and a lot of it).

Because out on the roads that border any school and car parks designated (or not) for this purpose, you will find three very specific driving patterns that intentionally or unintentionally make the task much harder and more stressful than it needs to be.

Here are the three most frustrating drivers you’ll come across on the school run…

They probably call themselves ‘busy’ but I like to call them ‘disorganised’.

This driver you will see arrive with two minutes to spare before the school bell rings at the start of the day, often pushing a good 20km/h over the school zone speed limit, until they pull into whatever space is closest to the front entrance of the school, barely stopping for their child/ren to get out.

More often than not, said space is not a car park but rather a no-standing zone, a bus area, or sometimes just the road parking in cars that have entered an allocated car space correctly and in a timely fashion.

This driver will never learn from their errors and bad choices but instead, you will more than likely find them doing the same act repeatedly, day in, day out, ironically while often sipping a takeaway coffee (priorities, right?!).

The Bubble Parent is the name I like to give the mums and dads, or other carers who seemingly have no perception of others around them, or just don’t care.

In other words, they live in a bubble.

These drivers frequently park poorly, whether over, or on lines of already tight car spaces making it near impossible for other drivers to park next to them without having car doors slammed into their side.

They also leave annoying gaps between other cars in pick-up or drop-off lines – not enough for a car to fit into, but with an unnecessary amount of valuable space that if had been used appropriately would have allowed another car to fit at the end of the line.

Or they are the first to arrive but rather than taking their place at the front of the line, they take up a spot right in the middle (usually to align with the school gate) so other drivers must park around them.

Just move up Bubble Parents!

The rule-breaking parent aka The Rebels, is possibly on the top of my most frustrating list.

These parents completely disregard car pick-up or drop-off rules, such as time limits and what is and isn’t permitted (e.g. getting out of the car to catch up with another parent) and they are seemingly blind to general road safety laws or traffic signs.

This can range from parking in front of no-standing signs, or parking in disabled parking or staff car parks (which although they are not entitled to use, they still do), bus zones (even between buses), or my favourite: mounting nature strips on street corners or traffic islands blocking the view of other cars and kids crossing the road to school.

No, being social and having parent friends to talk to at pick up and drop off isn’t a crime – in fact it can be really positive – but it is frustrating when it involves poor driving or parking decisions.

Like the drop-off line mentioned earlier, which is often ‘kiss and go’, add Social Butterflies into the mix and it can mean vehicles being turned off and them exiting the car for prolonged periods to talk to other parents, subsequently holding up multiple other drivers in the queue who are doing the right thing.

Or sometimes, when parents who have parked pop over to the pick-up line to chat through the car window of someone in the line, which of course has the same frustrating result.

So, with that, I hope the School Run Gods look down favourably upon you.

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