Let’s be clear about one thing: pavements are places where people walk. Parking cars, vans or lorries on the footway is not acceptable; it is rude, anti-social and dangerous. Vehicles parked on the footway are more than a mere inconvenience, they present a clear safety risk to all pedestrians, who find themselves forced to move into the road. Most worryingly, vehicles left on pavements present a particular hazard to children, parents with buggies, the elderly, wheelchair users, the partially sighted and the blind. Pavement parking obscures sight lines for people crossing the road and blocks the vision of drivers at junctions. And as footways are not designed to carry the weight of several tonnes of steel, so they become damaged. Cracked paving slabs and rutted paths are not just unsightly, they then become trip hazards. Pavement parking also has a psychological cost.
