Woman’s death could have been due to parked cars

[MikeRafone]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj6k7n734jgo

something should be done to prevent drivers blocking emergency vehicles

lines in red on narrow roads to show width of vehicle and if if your car doesn’t fit park elsewhere ( not on pavement)

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.

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

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

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

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.

It depends on local rules.

It shouldn't, but it does.

I'd just ban most urban street parking

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Where I live the road markings direct people to park on the pavements as part of the controlled parking zone. The roads predate cars. And there is nowhere else to park. So this is an area where you should.

Not boring at all. This is the daily challenges that need to be taken in mind

Yes shocking lack of disrespect from the neighbours

I grew up in the south Wales valleys, row upon row of terraced houses, narrow streets. It wouldn't necessarily be only a few minutes away, and public transport isn't always great - for example when I worked in Cardiff, the last bus home was 6.08, if I missed that the next bus to get to my nearest town was 7.15, and then had an hour wait for a second bus, so finishing at 6pm could mean getting home at 9.20ish.

I should point out that I don't drive, I fully understand the downsides of public transport, and that they need to be fixed before we can expect people to give up/reduce car usage. And it needs to be cheaper! I wanted to take DS to our nearest small town, I found they'd changed the zones and it would have been £10 for return tickets for the two of us! DH drove us instead.

No-one should accept poor grammar.

Not so much that, but it is a part of Belfast where the city's main hospital complex is close by, which is an absolute nightmare to park in, and staff and visitors/outpatients tend to park in nearby areas. Which makes it even worse really.

Yep.
And I really dislike this idea that wheelchair users and blind people are in opposition with emergency services. The options shouldn't be "screw over disabled people" or "screw over emergency services". Plus if blind/ VI or D/deaf person has to walk in the road they're at much higher risk of being hit by a car, which is going to require an ambulance to be called out instead of attending somewhere else. The same for wheelchair users, it can be a long way along the road until the next dropped kerb, we are the height of a child and unable to jump out the way if a car comes without paying attention.
Park somewhere else, and campaign for society to have less reliance on cars (better public transport, for example), or better infrastructure for car parking. In lots of Spanish towns there's a carpark underneath each apartment block, for example.

And it makes it seem like disabled people are the bad guys for stopping emergency services from getting through, if we very reasonably ask people to stop blocking the pavements. We just want to get around. And we want ambulances and fire engines etc to get through - after all, some of us are more likely to need them as well

This is because people are determined to park as close to their house as they can possibly get, with no thought to the consequences for others. It’s not dissimilar to parking outside schools, although that’s for a shorter time obviously. People just feel they’re entitled. Until they find themselves in need of an emergency vehicle that can’t get through.

It’s clear that if you are a family living in a terraced house, with two or three cars, there won’t be space for them. Lots of people here complain that there’s insufficient parking and are aghast when people suggest walking a little way.