Pavement parking

As the number of cars on the roads increases, our often narrow residential streets become busier and more and to protect their vehicles, more drivers park their cars on the pavements.

I live in a densely populated residential area with far too high vehicle ownership per household. While some narrower streets attract more pavement parking than the wider ones, I notice that even on these streets, some drivers park with just a wheel on the pavement while others have half of their vehicle’s width over it. Similarly, there are perfectly wide streets where most vehicles park on the road yet some owners park on the pavement. I do understand that many people rely on their car or van and want to protect it from being knocked by careless drivers on narrow streets.

 

From the vantage point of a non-driver who gets a lot of helpful mileage out of my partner and friends’ cars, I see vehicle ownership as a privilege and there should be no entitlement to parking spaces close to home for people other than disabled and older drivers. I know that we all build our lifestyles around the resources we have, but I don’t buy in to the impossibility of managing life without a car in cities. It is absolutely possible to work, bring up children and live full and vibrant lives without a car.

 

Obviously, I get the need for non-disabled drivers to park as close as they can to their house and the greater importance of vehicle security than pedestrian safety, accessibility and ease of movement. But I can’t help seeing this as a demonstration of selfishness and arrogance, a symbol of the dominance of the car and the importance of property over people.

 

The result of this is that I frequently catch my arm  on a car or van (particularly their wing mirrors which can be at face level on vans), or knock myself on some protrusion from housing, walls, gates etc that I’m forced up against. Sometimes there isn’t even enough pavement left to squeeze through. Wheelchair users and parents with buggies have no chance of getting past these obstacles and have to resort to using the road. I remember pushing my children in buggies in the early 1990s and often having to walk in the road because the presence of cars parked on the pavement made it impossible to navigate the pavement. I wasn’t able to be entirely sure that we were safe, but had to get about and could only rely on drivers seeing us.

 

What is it that goes through a driver’s mind when they park in such a way that means that they make the pavement unusable for pedestrians(?) perhaps it is that absolutely nothing goes through their minds, they simply don’t think… Well they should.

 

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