Are they parked or waiting to pick up kids from school?

That was my guess, some is the most deranged driving and parking happens by schools, even high schools where the kids don’t need anyone there to get them. They swarm in all around the block, as if there weren’t a dozen other ways to get them home.

In most of the world even primary school kids walk home alone.

I did, but I grew up in a town of 13,000 people with the school less than half a mile away. Most places in the US are too car centric and the schools too far away for kids to walk.

I live in a town about that size, and I’d estimate that over half of students get to/from school via their parents driving them. Which is insane because the way the buses are setup, your kids will just be picked up/dropped off from whatever the nearest school to your home is, so the parents spending multiple hours each day going to multiple schools to drop off then multiple schools to pick up could entirely avoid it

It’s seriously the only real rush hour in my town is when school starts/ends

About the only edgecase I’ve seen with busing is if you have multiple kids in school and one is special needs, because the special needs bus exclusively goes door to door and they don’t let siblings ride with them unless the sibling is also special needs, so parents have to be in 2 places at once for both kids to take the bus