AIBU To expect cars to park on the road?

the developers of my estate were forced to provide off street parking spaces for all the houses they built but you wouldn't know it for all the cars parked half on the pavements.

there are a handful of illegal pavement parkers near the children's school. some drive up onto the pavement behind children walking to school. I bang on the window and shout at them and generally make myself look an idiot. but one slip on the accelerator as they bump up the kerb could be two or more dead children.

my daughter has mobility issues, and sometimes it hurts to walk from the local car park to school. she still does but negotiating the crumbling pavement caused by the pavement parkers makes her wobbliness wobblier. my son has autism. he is scared of the cars driving up onto the pavement. due to the children both needing hands held past these cars it is really difficult to get past.

I care not if they get damaged in the process.

Parking on pavements makes me very cross. It also makes me cross to be told it isn't illegal. It is illegal to cause an obstruction. DH politely told one woman (three wheels on a narrow pavement) that she was blocking access and she replied, 'Where am I supposed to park, then?'

In some parts of London the councils have marked parking boxes half on the pavement and half in the road even if the pavements are narrow. So divers have no option but to park on the pavement otherwise they risk a fine!

That's interesting, Elrel. I once saw a woman open the door of her parked car and toss an armful of old rubbish down at the side of the pavement. I pretended to write down her number, and she got out and picked it all up! I suppose these days we'd have to take a photo on our phone and I don't know if I'm still up to the physical ruck that might follow!

I dreamt about this subject last night!
That I was walking on the pavement and there was a van whizzing along the pavement ahead of me.

Cars should not be allowed to park on pavements.

A lot of it is parents on the school run. Most schools round here seem to have some parents who'll park anywhere: on pavement, on double yellow lines, across school car park entrance, at bus shop on very narrow road. All to avoid a short walk, utterly selfish. At one school I was waiting for my granddaughter at a bus stop on a main road and doing a sudoku. A couple of mums must have thought I was taking numbers and quickly drove off!

Parking seems to be the reason behind a lot of bad feeling these days. There has been a garage at this house for over 50 years. It was used all the time. As a dead end lane which ended at our garage we could also park a car outside the garage without causing any trouble. My dad paid to have the full length of the lane resurfaced. All the other houses should have contributed. A very peculiar woman moved into one of the houses and she always puts her bins in the middle of the lane. It got t the stage that my dad could not manage to walk from the back of the house to get into the house. We were given a Disabled Parking Place at the front of the house. The neighbours objected to this because they live in the flats opposite and they want to park under their windows which is far more important than a parking space for an elderly man and another thought it would be a good place for her husband to park his taxi in the small hours of the night. The lane was blocked more than it was free so cant get the garage brought up to date. My 2 DCs got cars. Then we had 4 cars in the street. More hassles from the neighbours. I then got a driveway made and this made a bunch of dodgy workmen think they could extort money from the wee old wifey! The driveway is useless and sinking already and not even a year old but I am glad to get 2 of the cars off the road and on to the driveway. One of the neighbours already hit my car parked outside while I was flat out on the couch with the flu. The DCs don't stay here. Maybe it would be an idea to either give up the gardens at the flat to make parking spaces or maybe you should not have a car unless you have somewhere to put it.
I have been a carer dealing with dreadful health problems and getting aereated about parking is not the biggest worry I have ever had.
It is mostly a lack of manners or totally selfishness that cause people to demand to block places or lanes or demand to park under their windows. As nasty as it sounds I hope that those who objected to or park in the Disabled Parking Space get all the illnesses and health conditions that the members of this household have/had since they really seem to have a desire to get the space they can have the problems that earn one. Police have been useless!
SPF

Whoops! That was meant to be in response to Sunseeker and her clever friend.

Rather disgusting, but... When we lived in Kilburn there was an old chap (also long gone) who would pick up dog mess and wipe it on the door handle of cars parked across the designated crossing places where the children from the local school for the blind were supposed to cross. They never did it twice!

Charleygirl, would it be illegal to secure some of the fence top prickle strips, to your lawn?

Genius!
:-D

The campaign against pavement parking is here:

www.livingstreets.org.uk/make-a-change/take-action-with-us/pavement-parking

It annoys me every day too, quite apart from the access problems for people using the pavements, I think that repeated pavement parking must eventually damage the utility conduits underneath which will cost us all further down the line. It is so often done because people cannot be bothered to walk a few yards from their vehicles.

I use a mobility scooter and sometimes have to reverse a long way to find a dropped kerb because of cars on the FOOTPATH. The same applies when the bin men leave bins in the middle of the pavement after emptying and the owners don't take them in. Other culprits are those who allow their hedges to grow outwards.

Parking around here is the bane of my life, not only the " half on half off", but the houses where garages are not used for the cars, but as extra storage space. One of the houses now has 4 cars and a camper van, as well as the occasional van they use for work. None of the cars are garaged, it is too full of stuff, so usually two cars are parked on the road. None of the cars are garaged. Folk who drive across the pavement, to park in their front gardens, have been told that driving across the pavements will damage buried utilities! So, are the half and half'ers also in danger of damaging pipes, cables etc, or is this just another way for local councils to relieve you of your money?. The cost of having a kerb dropped can be approx. £600.00, depending where you live.

This does SO annoy me. In our cul de sac they park on both sides of the road and have no thought of access for emergency vehicles. On one occasion the binmen just went away because they were unable to get up the road between this selfish paring. A note was sent to residents so then they started (and still do) parking half on pavement and half on road. Mind you, the firemen have said that if there was an emergency they would just barge through and if there was any damage to the parked vehicles, then they would not be liable as responding to a life threatening incident ! All the houses have garages and two cars but some do park one car on their driveways and the other on the road. We have two cars - one IN THE GARAGE and one on the drive. I think that if they have garages and do not use them, they should pay to park on the road.

Charleygirl, try sprinkling some nails across the piece of grass where they park, once they've had a puncture or two they might think twice!

Just remembered that my next door neighbour did walk over a car that was parked on the pavement, when the driver refused to move it! My neighbour got in trouble with the police but the driver wasn't penalised!

I live in a mews and all of the front gardens are open plan and we are not allowed to change it- more's the pity or I would have a 7 foot high electrified fence around mine! People have ruined my lawn and kerb by parking 2 wheels on my grass. They live in another road and have nowhere to park- I would not buy or rent without having at least one parking space.

They've started ticketing people round here who park on the pavements. Signs went up and were initially successful, then the pavement parkers drifted back and the wardens have pounced

So it is legal to park on a pavement. I didnt know that.
In which case pavements do not belong to pedestrians only as the law stands.

I agree with Leticia.

Is it practical for the law to be changed?

Pavement parking makes me really rant! There used to be a group called "Pavements are for Pedestrians" which provided stickers which could be posted on cars telling them that they were obstructing but I couldn't find any when Googling. However years ago when childminding, often walking with a double buggy and three children walking, got pretty angry at being forced to walk into busy roads. So yes, I used to post these stickers on cars. But worse were the cars who used to mount the pavement behind me when I was walking with all these children, still driving, so that they could avoid the queues of cars! So very dangerous and I had to knock on a few windscreens to tell them to desist. Not that they did of course.

More recently I had to walk into the path of busy traffic even when I was struggling with crutches, due to selfish parking like this, even when there was plenty of space on the other side of the road for them to park.

This is what the police say (www.askthe police.uk):

"Local authorities (in England) can make an order prohibiting parking on the pavement. If this is the case, then there will be signs which clearly point out on a particular road where parking on the pavement is specifically prohibited. The penalty for contravening this will be a fixed penalty notice.

Otherwise, parking a vehicle on the pavement could lead to an offence of obstruction being committed. This could result in a fixed penalty notice being issued to offending vehicles. It can also cause danger/nuisance for pedestrians and wheelchairs users.

Note that it is an offence to drive on the pavement, yet despite the obvious inference that a parked vehicle has been driven on the pavement prior to being parked there, witnesses to the driving will probably be needed to secure a prosecution - this can be problematic."

I tried talking to someone parked across most of the pavement. His reply was "It's only five fucking minutes" So it's OK if we stand in the road chatting and hold up the traffic for five fucking minuites then?

I now photograph them with my phone - ostentatiously, so that they see me doing it.

If there were two of me, I would stand in front of and behind the car so that the driver couldn't drive it off for as long as it had been blocking the pavement for pedestrians - taking care to stand legally on the pavement, of course. They might be surprised at how long they had to wait.

We have some stretches of very wide pavement round here which drivers virtually block off by parking with all four wheels on the pavement. This is particularly annoying just round the corner from me, where it's common to find a car parked this way at a bus stop! Seeing as it's our local authority that is responsible for enforcing parking regulations, I rang them (after having emails ignored) to be told that parking on the pavement is legal, apart from in London. What is illegal is driving on the pavement, so unless (!) it can be proved that they have driven on the pavement to get there, everything's fine and dandy. Apparently the driver doesn't have to prove that they didn't drive on the pavement - good job, really, isn't it? .

I have had words with people that I've seen doing this. One woman in particular who parked right on the pavement where there are double yellows, on a busy main road. I tapped on her window and asked her if she thought it was acceptable for someone with a pushchair, for example, to have to walk in the road because her car was on the pavement. I pointed out the distances between the available dropped kerbs either side of her car, forcing a wheelchair user to travel quite a distance in the road just to get past her.
She was 'just waiting for her daughter to come out of school' (oh that's all right then ). I asked her why couldn't she park around the corner in a side road - she was about 2 metres from this road - and the reason? Because it's residents parking only there

Indeed nellie - it is very dangerous for blind people.