A byelaw in London forbids motorised traffic from parking on pavements, and it’s generally well observed, at least in the centre of town. However outside London there is a rather awkward compromise where driving a car or van along a pavement is banned, but pavement parking is not. This raises an obvious question of the car gets onto its pavement parking space, but leaving that aside, it’s quite normal to drive along the pavement in my part of Hertfordshire, and generally accepted. I have listed a few common reasons below for people who generally regard themselves as good, safe drivers - are they good reasons? And when are they OK to justify cycling along the pavement but not driving?
1. Solid road traffic at school time
This tends to occur very close to drop-off or pick-up times at primary school, after most of the kids have safely been deposited at the gates with a few minutes to spare. We’re not one of those families, we know exactly how long it takes to walk to school, so end up leaving the house a few minutes later than we should and run along the pavement. More organised parents do leave on time, but if they are driving, unpredictable traffic leaves them still queuing in traffic jams with seconds to go until the bell rings. The only option here (apart from abandoning the car in the jam) is to drive onto the pavement and complete the journey that way. This requires wide pavements, and regular sounding of the horn to warn other kids that you’re coming through, but does avoid getting your kids a poor punctuality record.
2. Looking for a house number
A very popular sight during the working day is a delivery van driving slowly along the pavement looking for a particular house number. They will have pulled onto the pavement where the SatNav told them to, and thereby avoided blocking the road. But then they find the postcode covers a wider area and need to drive along the pavement to find the right house. The same applies to taxi drivers, especially late at night. This can be more hazardous than other situations as the driver will be looking for house numbers rather than other pavement users.
3. Avoiding oncoming overtaking cars
Picture the scene, you are driving (or cycling) peacefully along a quiet street, probably within the speed limit. You see an obstacle on the other side of the road, maybe a slow moving bicycle, or perhaps a parked car. It’s of little concern to you as it’s not in your way. However, it is in the way of oncoming traffic, so what happens when they steer into your path? Should you stop and risk getting crashed into, or veer onto the pavement to avoid it? Honesty here - this is by far the most frequent cause of me cycling onto pavements.
4. Avoiding solid traffic to turn left further up
My house is about 100 yards from a set of traffic lights. Just before the lights, there is a separate turn left filter leading into the left turn and a pub car park. Traffic normally queues beyond my house when the lights are red, inconveniencing drivers turning left who have no need to queue for a traffic light that doesn’t apply to them. Many left-turners therefore use the pavement as an unofficial filter lane to avoid waiting behind traffic going right or straight ahead.
5. Running a series of drops / pick ups close together
Another popular school run technique for ecologically aware parent drivers who share lifts, but it applies to any lift shares where all the sharers live on the same street close to each other. Rather than rejoin the carriageway between each pick-up (or drop-off), or encourage picking up at a common point, it’s more usual to drive from one to another along the pavement. Arguably this is more jsstifable than (2) as its for the good of the kids, although its a pain for those walking to school, or cycling (also illegally) along the pavement with kids.
6. When the road is too narrow for the vehicle
There are times when the road is too narrow for the vehicle being driven down it. This applies to delivery trucks as well as larger cars, and is exacerbated by parking on one side of the road, often illegally. In this case, the pavement offers an informal temporary road widening scheme allowing easy access for wide vehicles on narrow steeets.
In all cases, these are everyday examples of practical reasons where driving on the pavement is somewhere between inconvenient and dangerous to pedestrians, but not caused by something as obviously stupid as speeding or drink-driving. We generally accept these as the danger caused to pedestrians is small. But with the hundreds of people being run over on pavements every day, is it something that pedestrians should tolerate?
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