Woman’s death could have been due to parked cars

This. Someone has gone down the road and assessed where a car can fit on the pavement . Weighing up the need for emergancy services to get through and people on foot or wheel to use the pavement I would welcome this in more areas of the country

Gosh what a sad thing to happen. Her poor family will always wonder 'what if' now.

Even sadder that lessons weren't learnt and the funeral car couldn't get down either.

That would be an "area where you shouldn't"

Just to be boring, wheelchairs are not the same as pedestrians or pushchairs. They can't just drop down a 4"-6" kerb where a pedestrian can step down and a pushchair can be lowered down.

If a wheelchair user reaches an obstruction and there is no dropped kerb, that wheelchair user can jolly well turn around and fuck back off to wherever they came from. Which may or may not be the intention.

I sometimes drive down roads near me and think to myself 'how on earth would a fire engine get down here'

I live on such a road, @BilboBlaggin, and our bin emptying is regularly missed because of a fool who visits elderly parents and leaves his car halfway across the road instead of putting the damn thing on their drive. A minor inconvenience admittedly, but I dread to think what could happen if it was an emergency vehicle

And naturally, requests to be more considerate make no difference at all

I think if you live in London you should require a permit to own a car in addition to a license to drive it. Permits should be cheap and readily available to those that can demonstrate need

We could start with second cars.

Also never mind electric lets make it possible to only buy a fiat multipla in poo brown and see how many people need to drive then

My area has perfectly decent public transport and everyone still seems to feel it's a necessity to have a car. So many people ask me what it's like taking my toddler on the bus in this shocked and awed tone. It's fine, really easy in fact? I lived somewhere where the buses weren't great and I get it, maybe a car is necessary in these areas, but our society is also completely car brained. It's poisoning our environment and causing issues like this. The answer should be to push for better public transport but as everyone gets lazy and entitled and starts driving everywhere, the services get cut further.

We stayed in a holiday cottage where the welcome folder included letters from the fire brigade, who would do a trial run down that street every so often and send out letters if they couldn't get down.
Unfortunately a lot of the road was holiday cottages, so they were depending on owners/agents to get the message across to everyone who stayed there.

Under Section 44 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 a firefighter "may do anything he reasonably believes to be necessary" in order to protect life and property in an emergency. Hopefully the owners of the badly parked vehicles will have to cough up for some paint for the fire engine.

I have a small car but thank you

I visit for my job which involves parking but also lots of walking. I have needed to park on the pavement in some streets. Ive been told off by someone coming out of their house once when I didnt to be told an emergency vehicle wouldn't get through so move my car to be half on the pavement (I didnt realise at the time there was a firestation at the end of the road that I couldnt see because the road bent round)

Many of the clients I visit are on small roads off busy A roads without pavements. There simply isnt any way of getting on foot to the road safely and if I need to park on the pavement on that small road I have to do that.

Many of these are as the PP points out, newbuild estates without adequate space, the roads are narrow, driveways inadequate, garages not big enough. Visitors have to park somewhere to visit those people.

As I say its a balance and frothing with blanket statements is not going to solve the problem

It depends on local rules.

It shouldn't, but it does.

I'd just ban most urban street parking

No you shouldn't park on the pavement. If your car can't be parked without causing an obstruction to carriageway, footway or cycleway then either get a smaller car or find somewhere else.

One thing - modern new builds don’t provide enough parking spaces for cars. Garages if built aren’t wide enough to get cars in and only provide one bay for 4 bed homes.

With children living with their parents longer than expected, the roads are going to be even more impossible to pass safely.

New builds are not future proof enough

Yes. My road is one, where the car box lines are clearly marked half on the road half on the pavement.

My road has parking bays at the back of the properties. Yet most park on the street - one section you can’t park on it between 9-5 on weekdays as single yellow line on one side and DYL on the other.

In the evenings and weekends, people park there opposite the free for all parking just before the DYLs. This narrows the area to pass.

I had a walk in the 3-4 parking areas and most were empty and yet the road was clogged.

Sheer laziness

My street ends in a cul-de-sac, about 27 year old estate. Never used to be a problem but there about 40 houses in out street alone and now each house has an average of 3 cars and mostly single drives, getting on and off drives is a nightmare, people park opposite, road is that narrow that if cars park opposite each other - which they do, you can't get through in a normal car, and some people wont move to park elsewhere as they feel entitled to the space directly outside of their home. And you can forget about walking on the pavement, can't get passed cars. Which is a nightmare as the road is on an incline so in the winter when its icy or snows the road is like an ice rink. We have 4 cars and luckily a double drive and i make the kids park down the street where there is space and wont block anyone in. But if he bring the work pick up home and he is on call, some nights he can't get out the street and has to knock people up on the street. Have also had ambulances where they cant get up the street or turn at the end.

No one likes a pedant

Well I have a drive way so this doesnt apply to me

What does apply to me is that I struggle with mobility at times (its not consistent) and have to walk in the road on local streets to me quite often. Its hard, but its not black and white.

What a ridiculous post, and a way to show lack of knowledge and privilege. Try living on a terraced street somewhere with no good public transport and then explain what people are supposed to do. No everyone lives in nice middle class areas well served by public transport and has drives to park on.

You make the assumption that car drivers are also not wheelchair and buggy users?

Smaller cars are needed. Far too many stupidly big cars on the roads.

That is absolute nonsense and you are the sort of car driver that gives others a bad name. The answer is to ban parking there. The height of selfishness expecting disabled and vulnerable children in buggies to walk on the road so you can be a lazy arse and park practically in your living room rather than walking a few minutes or shock, horror using public transport.

I live in an area where there are tons of terraced streets and as much as some people like to bang on about getting rid of cars, in reality public transport is so poor here that most people would not be able to get to work. Someone opposite had regular ambulance calls for a while, so they could get through, but I do think if people were not careful when parking it would have been hard to get a push chairs through. But what is the answer? Cars are a fact of life, people need them. Unless you knock the houses at the end of each road down and make it into parking for the residents.

There is no area where you should. If the road is that narrow then simply you should not park there. Even if it does mean you aren’t directly outside your house. Your car does not take priority over wheelchair users and buggy’s