Beck Vass: You need to stop doing this outside schools

Beck Vass is fed up with the bad habits of parents outside her daughter's school.

Something happens to us when we're driving in the rain. It makes us crazy, it makes us do irrational things.

On a very wet day recently, I watched some appalling driving outside our daughter's school.

This stuff happens on sunny days too but is much worse in wet weather.

It is a regular two-way street, but it becomes one-way in parts during school pick-up and drop-off times due to cars being parked on both sides of the road.

On sunny days, things seem to work well enough. It's kind of ordered chaos, the odd car pulling off into a gap to let others though, nothing too major. Things seem to work.

But on rainy days, it turns to carnage.

There are more cars picking up kids who usually bike and walk and everyone is trying to get that little bit closer to the school gates.

People are parking on grass verges or over driveways and on yellow lines.

It's the parking on yellow lines that upsets me most, even though all of it is dangerous. Parents use them as a personal pick-up spot.

It is parents especially who should have the worst-case scenario in mind when breaking the "no parking" rule - and that is: A kid could die.

Yellow lines are there for a reason. People parking on them block the flow of traffic, the view of traffic, or both. You are selfish and your selfish act could result in a serious injury or death, most likely of a child.

Even the most safety-conscious kids are prone to unpredictable movements, say the wind picks up a piece of art and they run to grab it, or a ball is dropped and they chase it on to the road. They do irrational things like that all the time.

And it isn't just the school kids you need to worry about, but their younger siblings as well.

In addition to the selfish parkers, the drivers who drive around illegally parked cars do so too quickly, often putting their foot down hard, frustrated after being held up and as if they have full visibility when they don't.

Cars are bigger - taller and wider these days - which doesn't help either.

You can sit there thinking: "It's not my fault if a kid runs out on me and I hit them."

No, it isn't. But is that really going to comfort you when you and your kids have witnessed something horrific like a child getting injured - or worse - because you didn't want to walk an extra 50 metres?

Why not pick up your kids 10 minutes later?

Get them to wait under an awning and tell them that on rainy days you will be a little later, then take advantage of getting a park right outside once everyone else has gone.

Or, if you can, go earlier and nab a close park and check some emails on your phone while you wait.

Or just park a little further away and deal with a little bit of a walk.

Just please don't be the reason, or even a contributing factor, to a kid being hurt or killed.