I have never understood this squeamish attitude to driving or parking on pavements, citing a host of laws and regulations and using a lot of special and sometimes speculative pleading on behalf of the disabled, mothers with side-by-side twin pushchairs, the elderly, the fragile cable, plumbing, gas and sewage mains suspected of being just below a paper-thin surface, etc. If it is done with care and commonsense though I see nothing wrong with it at all.
The reasons for driving or parking on pavements are often overwhelmingly strong, unlike most of the reasons advanced for not doing these things. I once got a mouthful from a policewoman for putting two wheels on a wide, totally empty pavement behind King's Cross station while doing a U-turn. I put the two wheels on the pavement to allow a car to pass. This silly woman asked 'what if there had been a child there'. Obviously if there had been I wouldn't have done it, but the plodette was clearly unpleasant as well as almost half-witted. Fortunately her (male) partner managed to shut her up.
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The children, the children, won't somebody think about the children !!
It's become a National cry in this country.Perhaps we should photograph every police car and council services vehicle we find with two wheels on the pavement and make a big song and dance about it.
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Perhaps we should photograph every police car and council services vehicle we find with two wheels on the pavement and make a big song and dance about it.
Do you mean like this?
tinyurl.com/66zrhd
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Do you mean like this?
You tryna be funny, shir? Bitva comedian are we? (BURP!)
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My street also has a pavement which is flush with the road but a different colour. It gives the impression of a pedestrianised area. Everybody drives on it, one or two people park on it but what's important is that nobody races down it so the overall effect is a good one.
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Lets be clear about this, driving and parking on a pavement is illegal, dangerous, selfish and socially unacceptable. The police can and do impose fines on offenders and the more the better as far as those who actually walk along and the use pavements or need fire access are concerned.
For those who think it is ok to park or drive along a pavement think again. Consider what it's like when a pavement is blocked or partially blocked with a car for those who drive a Mobility vehicle or push or use a wheelchair, or pram pushers, parents with children or walking with a dog or just walking.
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>For those who think it is ok to park or drive along a pavement think again. Consider what >it's like when a pavement is blocked or partially blocked with a car for those who drive a >Mobility vehicle or push or use a wheelchair, or pram pushers, parents with children or >walking with a dog or just walking.
As LUD said, we wouldn't drive on a pavement if there was a Mobility vehicle, pushchair wheelchair, parents with children or dog walkers.
But to block a whole road for minutes at a time because you refuse to briefly use a clear pavement to navigate round the obstruction is equally dangerous, selfish and socially unacceptable
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"For those who think it is ok to park or drive along a pavement think again. Consider what it's like when a pavement is blocked or partially blocked with a car for those who drive a Mobility vehicle or push or use a wheelchair, or pram pushers, parents with children or walking with a dog or just walking."
Please excuse my laughing - the carriageway in my own residential street is relatively narrow and when home owners very sensibly parked their cars with 2 wheels on the footpath to allow through traffic to move easily along the road the Council promptly ticketed the offenders because they were clearly breaking the law.
The next day, to avoid tickets, the residents all parked properly in the road and by evening rush hour the police were on the scene to direct through traffic around the huge jam.
A week later we got little grey poles with permitted pavement parking signs and white bays marked out on the footpath. Commonsense ruled and nobody, not even the council, gave a stuff about the apparent difficulty endured by pushchair owners etc.
This farce must have cost thousand of pounds and guess who paid?
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"those who ... push or use a wheelchair, or pram pushers, parents with children or walking with a dog or just walking"
Without exception, everybody on our street just walks down the middle of the road. As I said it gives the whole street a pedestrianised feel. It's a wonderful traffic calming measure yet uses no furniture or speed humps.
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Lets be clear about this driving and parking on a pavement is illegal dangerous selfish and socially unacceptable.
Oh for heaven's sake. Generalisations like that make you sound like a stereotypical small-minded, sanctimonious, pointless little letter-of-the-law jobsworth. I'd have thought you wouldn't want to sound like one of those.
Driving or parking on a pavement is sometimes dangerous and sometimes selfish. In those cases it is entirely appropriate that the law deals with the offender.
Driving or parking on a pavement is sometimes neither dangerous nor selfish, indeed quite the opposite. Examples have been given in this thread. If those cases happen to still be technically illegal then so what? Laws do not exist for their own glory, they are simply a means to an end - an attempt to produce some desirable outcome. Where a technical transgression of the law does not hinder that outcome that is simply an illustration of the fact that it is often difficult to write down a rule that sensibly covers every real world situation that may arise. To blindly and simplistically enforce a law without remembering this fact and without keeping the real purpose of that law in the forefront of the mind serves no positive purpose. It is simply petty and entirely misses the point of having laws in the first place.
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nicely put GJD.....the bigger picture etc....some just don't see it.
Sir Douglas Bader's quote springs to mind again: "Rules are made for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools".........
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>>Sir Douglas Bader's quote springs to mind again: "Rules are made for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools"......... <<
A prime example of of a fool who thought he was a wise man.
"These rules don't apply to me -------- whoops, there goes my legs and an expensive aircraft"
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Lets be clear about this driving and parking on a pavement is illegal dangerous selfish and socially unacceptable......
.....and should be punished by public flogging, hanging, drawing and quartering! ;-)
Lighten up mate; the OP was about having to drive on a "pavement" to get past a parked vehicle. If we all sat and waited for such vehicles to be moved rather mount a kerb, having first checked that it's safe to do so, every road in the country would be gridlocked!
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Common Law dictates that you are not supposed to obey a law literally to the point of absurdity or to make mischief. Judges test for 'the absurdity rule' and the 'mischief rule' when judging cases.
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A pavement is not a pavement when it is being used by cyclists. Also, SFAIK, it is absoltely, totally, 100% forbidden to go thru or ignore a red traffic signal, even if this action prevents or delays the passage of an emergncy vehicle, and even if common sense suggests that one should make way. DVD, Westpig, MLC?
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 03/12/2008 at 21:57
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If they give an opinion, it will favour commonsense where that runs contrary to the letter of the law. And so it should.
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Lets be clear about this driving and parking on a pavement is illegal dangerous selfish and socially unacceptable.
As I type this my car is parked with 2 wheels on the pavement, dosn't mean the pavements blocked though, I know for a fact that there is still enough space for the old lady up the street to get past with her 3 wheeled walking frame, I know that I can get the side-by-side double buggy out the front gate, turn witchever way I need to go without touching the car.
Pavement parking dose not have to mean the entire pavement is blocked, and as to "fire access" I assume you mean access for fire engines, well you wouldn't get a fire engine down here if we didn't all park with 2 wheels on the kerb.
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i have to ask what people would prefer the occasional car parked on the path in order to facilitate traffic flow or the local authority complusory purchasing 10 feet of your garden in order to widen the road, i think most of the people who complain about cars parked on the pavement even when its not causing a blockage to pedestrain traffic would not like the latter choice
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Local planning authority refused planning permission for a chap to build a garage. This would mean he would have to cross a section of the monoblocked "road" that was differently coloured - in their way the differently coloured section was deemed pavement. (The chap already had a garage, but wanted it moved to a different side of the house).
They used the same logic for a section of grass - they classed that as pavement / pedestrian area too. They exlained that if there had been a section on the other side of the street differently coloured, then they would have accepted that a pavement would still be available. But as the difefrent colours were only on one side of the street, then NO.
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