AIBU to get really annoyed with cars that park on the pavement?

[IsItEvilLegal]

They are all over the place around here. It REALLY bugs me.

I don't even know if it's legal, but it's public pavements. It's not always even infront of houses, so I can't see the reasoning.

Am I the only one this really gets on the wick of?

I want to know why they park on the pavement outside my house (seems to be a favourite spot for people to answer their phones).

Yes the pavement is wide enough for a transit to park on it and still get passed with a double buggy but so is the road. Lane of parked cars on both sides and still room for the buses to pass each other easily. So WHY park on the pavement????

Tonight we came round the corner to find another car parked half on the pavement. DD2(11) said in a very loud and exasperated voice "Why on earth are you on the pavement" There were two people in the car with the window down but unfortunately it was too dark to see their reaction.

We have a lot of this. People basically park outside their houses completely blocking the pavement. I feel free to walk (including buggy and child) on their lawns.

Yanbu.

I once read a 'pro-car' thread on mumsnet where a driver complained about people crossing the road between parked cars. I don't know how to get my kids to school in light of this, given that parents park up the whole length of my street, and I live in the same street as the school. But clearly it is my fault for wanting to cross the road, not their fault for parking on the street instead of using parking within the school (not favoured because you have to walk up a hill )
I don't mind it when they park partially on the pavement because I will scrape the buggy past,and hope and pray they decide parking inside the school is a safer bet.

Flibberty - I once banged on the bonnet of a car that was trying to cut across the pavement where the dses and I were walking home from school (the driver didn't want to wait until the lights changed, and the traffic ahead of him moved off, so he could turn left - so tried to cut across the pavement).

I banged on the bonnet and forced him back onto the road! And then I had a rant at him too.

Buggies, wheelchair-users, visually-impaired pedestrians these were all the reasons we in our area campaigned against a CPZ that featured pavement parking. So the Council said sod it we couldn't have a CPZ at all. The parking's three times as bad, but there is nowhere else for people to park.

People park half on the pavement here - otherwise the cars on the other side of the road can't park. There is no other place to park but similar streets where it's the same.

"People park half on the pavement here - otherwise the cars on the other side of the road can't park. There is no other place to park but similar streets where it's the same."

Tough shit. It's illegal and dangerous. Walk further!

People park half on the pavement on the road I live on, but there's still enough space for people to get past, so it's not a problem.

It's pointless to say that people should park elsewhere, all the other streets around here are the same, so people understand that it's a necessity. If they are walking along these roads in the first place, it's likely that they live nearby and have exactly the same issue outside their own house.

Many people have driveways as well, so there will always be cars on the pavement as cars try to get on or off their driveways. Parents should not be complacent and let their children skip or scoot far in front of them just because they are on a pavement. With the best driving skills in the world, drivers can't be expected to see people that are very small and moving very fast at all times.

With the best driving skills in the world, drivers can't be expected to see people that are very small and moving very fast at all times.

Actually, that is exactly what you are expected to try to do as a driver. You are the one causing the risk as you choose to operate heavy machinery in public.

You are supposed to take into account of the area and conditions you are driving in and adapt accordingly. So if you are driving near a school at 3 o'clock you should reasonably expect to see children and adapt your driving to suit. If you are overtaking a bus at a stop you should be dropping a gear, going carefully and anticipating the possibility that a pedestrian might step out from the front of the bus. If you are driving on the motorway you could be forgiven for not expecting to see pedestrians, but you are still expected to keep looking as far forward as you can see regularly for clues like debris that might suggest a breakdown or accident that will require you to slow down to avoid something.

If you are driving on the bloody pavement you should expect to see pedestrians who aren't looking out for cars, because they are on the pavement and should be able to walk in peace without having to dive out of the way!

I've seen it happen twice where a driver is moving slowly and carefully off their drive when a small child runs or scoots in front of them. Both times the driver was able to stop, but they genuinely couldn't have done any more than they were already doing, and it still resulted in a near miss.

Most of the houses round here have hedges or walls separating the front gardens from the pavement, and if children are too short to be seen from the other side of the wall or the hedge, and they are running or are on a scooter, I do believe it's the adult responsible for them that is putting them in danger. If they were walking at a normal speed close to their adult, then the drivers would be able to see them, and wouldn't have had to make emergency stops on the occasions I witnessed.

YANBU, I can understand why some people may feel the need to - or may need to if the parking is mean to be that way, like around my way- but a bit of courtesy goes a long way. Unless people have been told by the Police to park on the pavements (which happened around my way until they actually painted on the parking lines) then they shouldn't be. Although i do think that doesn't usually apply to very large pavements grass verges because if you have a verge you have plenty of pavement anyway,that's what ours was like before they put in the lines.

People should be more careful on the road and pavements. I remember coming around a corner to find a twat of a man stopped on the kerb with his buggy in the road, jutting out. I had to swerve to avoid clipping it, could have killed the baby because of his stupidity or hit another car that was coming. To make things worse the bend is a blind one so there's a zebra 100m down the road. He was lucky that there was nothign coming, i didn't hit baby and that it's a 30mph but I was going 20mph because i knew the bend was coming up. I didn't think about buggies sitting in the road though, i ws watching for cyclists.

The car that almost hit my child the other day wasn't driving slowly onto the pavement. If DS had been a few feet ahead, it would have hit him.

YANBU to be annoyed. But on many streets no cars would be able to park if this did not happen.

WooWooOwl I've seen that too. I've also seen (and I shouldn't be surprised because the nanny was crap) a car slowly reversing into a space to allow another to flow through. The driver was carefully looking but this nanny was doing her usual, chatting on her phone and ignoring her charges. The smallest was only about two and not on reins and hand-held, she darted out and ran into the side of the reversing car. The nanny swore, smacked the top of the car and the driver over something that was her own fault.

Two days later it happened again, the toddler ran out in front of a car and got yanked back by another mum. Nanny didn't even notice so they took the little one into the school and reported it. I don't know how long it took that nanny to notice the toddler was gone.

and freaked out the driver, that should say.

Depends on where you live as to whether pavement parking is permitted. I don't have a parking space for where I live, but can often park in a side road. Sometimes though, I have to park on the main road, which is permitted. If I have to do so, I always ensure that my wing mirrors are in, and that there is space for a wheelchair to pass the side of the car.

I do walk quite a bit, but when I've got the car full of shopping, or a very wriggly toddler (and sometimes pushchair), I don't want to be walking from the nearest car park to my home.

Having said all that, selfish parking really annoys me. There is a parade of shops nearby with a set of about 10 car parking spaces adjacent to them. However, people still park entirely on the pavement meaning that pedestrians have to walk in the road to get around.

"Where I used to live the streets were so narrow the cars had to park up on the pavements. (Blame medieval town planning.)
I agree that with push/wheel chairs it is a massive pita but some drivers have no choice"

Exactly. The town near where we live has rows and rows of terrace houses (built before the motor car was invented) on narrow streets and with no front gardens. There is literally nowhere to park and walk from.

Someone died recently because an ambulance couldn't get up a road because of the parked cars. If they had been partially blocking the pavement instead of the road this might not have happened.

Town planners vastly underestimate the amount of parking required in housing estates as well, allowing one parking space per house. If anyone has a party or friends round they end up parking all over the place. And suggesting using public transport is a waste of time because there aren't any bus services between the villages round here.

Yes it is a PITA but I would rather have to step in the street to get past a car than have the road blocked to emergency vehicles.

What really gets my goat is the the council insisting that everyone puts their wheelie bins on the pavement on bin collection day. The pavements in our village are narrow so you have to step out into the road to get past them (BTW the roads in our village are wide enough for cars not to have to park on the pavements, but in the local towns they aren't)

I don't think it's pointless to say that people should park elsewhere, as some people block pavements out of laziness. In our area there is plenty of space for cars on the roads as every house has allocated off-road parking spaces dotted around (we have two) and/or drives and so there aren't many cars parked on the roads. Yet the offender in my area chooses to block the pavement outside their house (you can't squeeze past with a pram). They could easily park elsewhere and have less than a minute to walk but they choose not to.

It depends very much on the area hedgehog. In town there are streets and streets of roads without anywhere to park. What do you do if you have heavy shopping/small children? Or are only people without cars allowed to live in these houses?

I agree with that, I was just commenting on the statement that it's pointless to say it, as obviously there are different scenarios.

Tough shit. It's illegal and dangerous. Walk further!

There is nowhere further to walk - when you live in an area of terraced houses - streets and streets of them, it's what everybody here has to do. The lady next door in her mobility buggy can get through ok, as can my friend with a double buggy. I don't think it is illegal if you're not blocking the path. Oh and by the way I don't drive myself.

YANBU they do it because they are lazy and selfish.

Nope. They do it because so many streets in the UK are too narrow to park cars and drive down.

Technically, it's illegal.

But in reality, I think it depends where you live and on what your neighbours do/think.

Our street is a cul de sac in a small village. The pavement is only used for parking. In order to get cars on both side and still allow a car to fit down the track (wouldn't even call it a road) we have to park fully on the pavement, all 4 wheels, wing mirrors pressed into the hedges.

We can't park on the other streets as the space is used by the people who live on those streets. We can't park on the only main road through the village as it's a main road and has no parking. We have to have cars as there's no bus service (okay, there's one a day) and we're several miles from the nearest town.

So, the pavement it is. It's never caused a problem for anyone, we all just walk in the road.