If you were a Policeman

[obi_waynne]

If you were a traffic officer what would you be most keen to go out and enforce?

Are there any groups of drivers or bad habits you'd make a special point of correcting?

 

[turbonutter69]

I'd go an sit outside my sons school morning and home time.
It ridiculous the amount of parents that take the car an park outside school, even though they live minutes away.
The schools street is very narrow anyway, so it makes it very dangerous and chaotic at times as impatient drivers try and force their way through.
They should ban parking within a certain distance of all schools.
They could make it so you have to apply to be able to park if you live "x" amount of miles away where walking wouldn't be possible. But it's chaos none the less normally.

 

[old-git]

On average, in Essex, there is a fatality outside each school every 250 years. Schools are very safe places at delivery and collection times due, in part, to the congestion. Remove the congestion and speeds increase. A child is far more likely to be killed on way home from school once away from the immediate area of the school.

 

[turbonutter69]

On a normal road I can agree with that. Although the road in question is very narrow and not easy to see either way when it's clear never mind with cars parked all down one side.
The are also speed humps to restrict speed, but to be honest. Regardless of whether there are cars parked or not, some of the mothers are lunatics in the morning. Flying past trying to be as fast as Lewis Hamilton some times.
There has actually been several incidents with collisions but the council nor the police do anything about it. All that happens is they send a community support officer down every once in a while.
Although even when people are parked illegally they don't do a thing.

 

[old-git]

What do you expect them to do? What would you like them to do? There are over 408 primary schools in Essex, and I bet most have a perceived safety problem. Send a police car to every school every morning? Or a traffic warden?

Whenever we checked speeds outside schools, having been told parents were speeding, the actual speeds were very low. You will always get the idiot, no amount of policing will prevent that.

At the end of the day, the perception is that there is danger but he facts are that schools are very safe.

Government regs allow us to send our kids to schools outside the traditional catchment areas, meaning that kids have to be ferried to and from, hence the vehicle increase.

 

[turbonutter69]

Yes I understand your point.
But my point is. Most of the cars outside school are people that live within walking distance.
It's laziness on the main part. But my point is the street where the school is here is very tight. The people that are rushing to get there kids to school in the car get aggressive and it ends up being chaos. It's not the odd idiot that is the problem, it is the parents.
My point was restrict parking near schools unless the child lived far enough away that walking wasn't possible. Like out of the catchment area.
To be fair i'd like to see what it was like when I was a child.
Not many parents had cars then so everyone was forced to walk.
Don't take this personally, this is only my opinion.

 

[old-git]

Nothing personal taken, just explaining the situation as seen from the retired traffic safety engineer's perspective

Chaos is good, as it is normaly slow chaos. We, as traffic engineers, were spending our limited time and resoures trying to improve sites where people were actually being hurt and there were more of those than we had money for, so why spend limited resourses at sites that 'might' have an injury some time in the future?

The schools should take more responsibility, but they turn away. Many were even closing their school car parks in case someone was hurt on school property, pushing the problem out on to the highway then bleating about the problem!

We would all like to see it like when we were at school, bit that ain't going to happen.

 

[turbonutter69]

That's correct yes, they close the carpark at the school here as well.
There have been injuries though in this case. Not a child but an elderly fella got hit in all the rush not too long ago and is now in intensive care.
It's a lost cause really. The schools should do more yes. But more importantly, parents should stop being lazy and walk.

 

[RobBentley]

I've often been driving around thinking if my car was an unmarked police car, the amount of stupid things people do - I could have a field day!

 

[T9 man]

In central London they are getting very sneaky, they even have a builders look van with blues & two fitted.
So be aware people, you never know who you may sitting alongside on the roads down here - so behave yourselves

 

[RobBentley]

The most annoying thing is I know somebody (multiple super-car owner) who goes everywhere like his arse is on fire, yet for some reason always manages to avoid any points. He gets stopped, but somehow ALWAYS walks away with a telling off.

 

[T9 man]

Some people just have the gift of the gab! Maybe he's quick to buy a couple of tickets to the policemans ball