h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Cor, I'm ing! I had to pick someone up from the main road near their home this afternoon as they couldn't get their car off their sloping driveway and out of their small side street which has rather a steep gradient... That's fine, all the main roads are clear here anyway.

Except for the large family group (adults pushing small children in pushchairs and accompanying youngish children of around six to eleven years of age I'd say) walking up the side of the road (a dual carriageway with a speed limit of 40mph which is pretty much clear but with heavy snow and slush at the edges. But more to the point, lots of drivers are rather nervous about driving with snow in the general vicinity even though the road surface itself is pretty grippy and is equivalent to a road that has been rained on. Anyway. The children were throwing snowballs at EVERY car that went past. A barrage of snowballs went across my windscreen and down the side of the van I was driving.

The adults/parents did NOTHING. I watched them pelt the car ahead of me and me and the car behind and the adults didn't seem to care in the slightest. What the hell has happened to being just a tiny bit sensible? I was always taught not to interfere with moving vehicles, it is surely a basic thing. I know snowballs seem harmless, but you simply dont throw things at moving vehicles for Bob's sake! It's pretty scary, even though I saw it coming a mile off, and if there was anything in the snowballs (stones etc) you can cause damage to the vehicles. Gawd people annoy me!

I got one thrown from a bridge when I was on the highway. Made a loud bang, but luckily my windscreen went unharmed. Bloody idiots nonetheless.

Yeah, but you have to admit it feels sooooooo good to vent your spleen here with like minded reasonable people

yes

yeah, they are bloody annoying!they do run, when I stop + let the dog loose!!! he he he

A call to the police might have been in order by the sound of it.

definitely. What were their parents thinking?

I'm with Orcus on this one and the police do take it seriously.

An alternative response would have been for you and a number of other drivers to have stopped (holding up the rest of the traffic) and pelting them with snowballs until they got the message.

t.

Or stopping and explaining calmly to the children why it's a bad idea, and why they should pelt their parents instead...

YES!

certain schools don't take too kindly to being told of their pupil's actions!! - I don't know if that maybe a good strategy

use reverse psychology: offer the school free lessons with AK 47's to keep the kids off the streets

I couldn't stop, the cars behind me would have hit me, it's simply not a safe place to stop.

I know exactly why the parents were doing nothing. I'd put money on them rarely if ever being in a car, certainly not in the snow and almost definitely not being drivers. They probably think it's harmless. I'm in a car, it's not going to harm me so why am I worried? They probably have no idea that actually, those snowballs were hitting the vehicles in excess of 40mph (i.e. the speed I was travelling at plus any added velocity of them throwing them at me, assuming some degree of angle towards me...). Suddenly it's a bit more than a harmless ball of snow being chucked by a kid, but why would they know if they weren't taught by their parents not to interfere with moving vehicles.



And people wonder why I have minimal sympathy when their children go running into roads without looking... Especially when I know they get their children in and out of cars on the road side, not the pavement side because it's more convenient for them than walking around the car, that they teach their own children bad habits when it comes to vehicles (running across roads from between parked cars instead of walking twenty yards to a crossing, that sort of thing...)

Bah bloody HUMBUG!

They soon get a shock- when I rev the engine at them, + pretend to give chase! - you confront one of them + snarl, they'll soon learn not to mess

I was lucky enough, to have one of my patients watching as some kid tried to throw a snowball at my car- -lets say that child won't be doing that again for a very long time!!!

How quickly we forget the floods of late summer, or what passed for a summer in the UK, and how to submerge a post office van up to it's roof in the flood water

It was Parcel Force. Inferior to us postal types

Mr Mandelson doesn't think so He thinks you're all very very naughty

I'm sure driving the van into the flood wasn't the way to behave, though you did say Karma robbed him of his trendy trainers

Mandy can walk a month in our shoes on our money and with our working conditions before he opens his great big assuming gob.

It'll all change after the next election- not!! I suspect children aren't being allowed to be disciplined as they once were!!

My GP, told me he used to put children/babies across his knee + whack their chests to get sputum + other stuff up- now I'm a GP + if I did that, I'd be told off badly!!-oh well

but beating (gently!) the chest is a great way to loosen all the crud! (if you'll excuse the frankness of speech).

Well, not for me, but that's because I have an abnormally sensitive sternum/chest area. Dont know why but the slightest pressure on my chest is incredibly painful. Not inside, just ridiculously sensitive to pressure, Where a poke might leave an uncomfortable sensation in a normal person, it hurts for quite a while...

Anyway, enough about me. I think this was less a problem of discipline (i.e. not being allowed to do it) and more about uninformed parents not really caring and thereby not educating their children about anyone other than themselves.

Harsh? Oh I hope so.