Cycling UK Forum

Ru88ell wrote:What would happen to me if my shopping trolley full of paving slabs was to accidentally crash into a car that was parked on the pavement?

Depends who sees you do it and if it really looked accidental!

Ru88ell wrote:What would happen to me if my shopping trolley full of paving slabs was to accidentally crash into a car that was parked on the pavement?

Well, seeing as i'm pretty sure its illegal to park on the pavement, i expect you could sue them for damage to your paving slabs.. ;D

There were a couple of vans parked on the pavement today. I watched two pedestrians go onto the road to pass the first one and at the same time the second van decided to drive off the pavement towards them.
As they were not quick enough to jump onto the pavement infront of him they were in the wrong for being on the road and the van driver beeped his horn at them to get out of his way.

meic wrote:There were a couple of vans parked on the pavement today. I watched two pedestrians go onto the road to pass the first one and at the same time the second van decided to drive off the pavement towards them.
As they were not quick enough to jump onto the pavement infront of him they were in the wrong for being on the road and the van driver beeped his horn at them to get out of his way.

I wish I could say that that was unbelievable, but I can't. My wife has struggled with pavement parking and her double pram. People are so darn precious about their car/van etc it makes me mad! But remember they can do what they like because its us cyclists that "ride on the pavement". So it's our fault after all

My wife is a guide dog user and parking on the pavement is a complete nightmare for her. Most of us can simply walk round the offending vehicles with a degree of safety but for her the issue is much more complex. I appreciate that being in a wheelchair would present just as many problems!

As it turns out the issue is that if the vehicle is parked on double yellow lines, for example, then the driver has commited a civil offence and the car simply gets a parking ticket. However, if it mounts the kerb it is in breach of the Road Traffic Act and it is therefore a criminal offence.

So far so good, but as it is a criminal offence the police must be involved and they are hobbled because they need proof that someone actually drove the vehicle onto the pavement.

So the more serious offence is actually much harder to police than simple parking offences.

What is required that the crime of parking on the pavement is downgraded to a civil offence, then we can use traffic wardens to issue tickets and raise revenue for the local authorities. Otherwise it is simply a burden on the police service and, possibly quite rightly, they do not react to it as they have many more important things to sort out (I know you will probably flame me for that comment but they DO do a good job, with limited resources and they are not the problem).

Basically the law is an ass and it is better to not use the law but instead local authorities to resolve these issues. I'm working on it in West Fife, you can do the same where you live - if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem (I feel the need to take a shower now).

I did not realise it was a criminal offence. Is it that they need proof of who put it there? The proof is there that someone did.

If it was in traffic warden hands, though, I am not so convinced that they would ticket people parked in residential areas outside their homes. In my estate, everyone who bought a house supposedly had to sign a contract to have only 1 car, yet most households have 2 and some have more. Pavement parking is rife. People in the area consider this to be considerate parking as the road is not narrowed much! People would protest too loudly about their nightly (by RIGHT!) parking place being made financially inconvenient and the council would back down, if they bothered to fine them in the first place. There are no double yellows, but only space for a row of cars on one side, if on the road completely.

Sometimes they park right in the middle of the pavement and off the road altogether, but spaced evenly on each side so that they are as obstructive as possible. I have the urge to kick these cars when walking past but I restrain myself.

Driving onto the footway is not, in itself an offence. It would otherwise be impossible to get to private drives, garages etc., behind the footway.

The decided cases make it clear that the driving on the footway offence, which goes right back to carriages / horses and carts, addresses driving along the footway only i.e. driving there instead of on the carriageway.

Once upon a time it was practice to prosecute drivers of cars parked on the footway under the 'con & use' regs for causing an unnecessary obstruction. (This does not require proof of an actual obstruction, just that part of the highway was obstructed in the sense that it was rendered unavailable.)

Some years ago a case was decided on appeal when a bill-poster parked his van with two-wheels on the footway, two on the carriageway. It was held that this obstruction was necessary, in the sense that he had to park near where he was working, but more importantly in this context, that by using the footway like that, he was causing less obstruction than if he had been entirely on the carriageway. This decision to some extent legitimised the idea of getting half the vehicle up onto the footway to keep motor traffic moving, and never mind the poor old pedestrians. A terrible decision IMO which made enforcement extremely difficult and was the start of the rot.

Incidentally, yellow lines apply to the entire highway on the side where they are painted, which includes the footway, so footway parking by yellow lines is enforceable with a ticket.

jocks wrote:So far so good, but as it is a criminal offence the police must be involved and they are hobbled because they need proof that someone actually drove the vehicle onto the pavement.

As opposed to it being left there by aliens?

Couple of points here, firstly it is illegal to drive on the pavement under any circumstance, however exemption is given to people to cross the pavement to access their driveways. That is quite clearly stated in the Road Traffic Act.

Secondly, as I said the law is an ass. A criminal offence requires a criminal and therefore someone has to be held responsible. The vehicle itself cannot be prosecuted, only the driver. So when it becomes a police issue they need to get evidence of the driver driving the vehicle on the pavement. This is surprisingly difficult to achieve. Something as routine as a speeding ticket is frought with complexity, which is why newer speed cameras photograph the driver as well as the vehicle - that way they have proof of the criminal and secure a prosecution more easily. That is why many drivers contest and win speeding cases, because there is often no proof they were driving the vehicle at the time. This is a mismanaged pile of poo that lets the drivers get away with murder and leaves pedestrians unprotected.

I have used a video camera to secure police interest in a vehicle parked outside my local school, but you run the risk of getting yelled at by the driver in question - at best.

One difficulty about using traffic wardens is that they finish at 1800 and don't generally work weekends, which are the exact times that the drivers do all their illegal parking. Basically you can use the pavements when the drivers are not there but cannot while the wardens are off duty.

Another problem is that if the vehicle is owned by a private company then the registration details do not necessarily belong to the house outside which the vehicle is parked, therefore your complaint to the police gets forwarded to a corporate who do nothing.

Fristrated yet? I know I am. All my wife wants to do is walk along a pavement and there appears that there is nothing the authorities can do.

Direct action? Probably illegal - although if the police accept that aliens depositied the vehicle on the pavement, maybe the same aliens then also vandalised it? However, if you get a lot of vandalism in your area your house insurance will rise and we will all be a little poorer.

Local Authority petition? - Really slow and problematic. Also requires manpower to perform any actions.

Police petition? - Hampered by legal constraints and as I said before it does not feature highly on their list of problems. How many times a day do you still see mobile phones being used in vehicles? Speeding, failure to use indicators, erratic lane changes on roundabouts, crossing over the top of mini-roundabouts and, well, too damn many other things that the police simply cannot cover.

Act of Parliament? - Slow, and usually ineffective. Just count the number of people smoking in business vehicles to see how useless that approach is.

Public information? - Perhaps a public information film about the dangers of pavement parking would have an effect, but at the end of the day we are relying on people to be inherently supportive of their fellow citizens, not something we have a good track record of in the UK of B. Still, I think this is our best chance, strangely.

Bollards at the kerb?

Unfortunately bollards are expensive and are a hindrance on narrow pavements.

One form of protest is to use the road to walk on instead of the pavement but it would require mass dissent and nerves of steel.

Since more people drive rather than walk the economic imperative is with the drivers. The more people that walk the better it becomes, once the economic imperative is with the pedestrians then things may improve but until then the car is king.

I am not anti-car, I like my car, but I don't use it for commuting. To my mind the problem is one of social grace rather than legal or political. This is resolved by shifting public opinion and this is achieved by education.

jocks wrote:Couple of points here, firstly it is illegal to drive on the pavement under any circumstance, however exemption is given to people to cross the pavement to access their driveways. That is quite clearly stated in the Road Traffic Act.

So that I get my facts right in future, I should really be interested to know the act and section you are quoting as there must have been a fundamental change since I retired and I do like to be up to date.

To practise what I preach - I believe that the current legislation is still s72 of the Highways Act 1835.

jocks wrote:.... However, if it mounts the kerb it is in breach of the Road Traffic Act and it is therefore a criminal offence.

So far so good, but as it is a criminal offence the police must be involved and they are hobbled because they need proof that someone actually drove the vehicle onto the pavement.

The London Borough of Kingston doesn't seem to have that problem. Their leaflet on it (www.kingston.gov.uk/pavement_parking.pdf) warns of a £60 FPN issued by their parking contractors.

Pete

thirdcrank wrote:
So that I get my facts right in future, I should really be interested to know the act and section you are quoting as there must have been a fundamental change since I retired and I do like to be up to date.

My Highway Code, section 123, cites the HA 1835 sec 72 & RTA sect 34*

Pete


* http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/uk ... 80052_en_3

Jocks
You are right that the law is an ass.

On the other hand, anybody enforcing it has to comply with it rather than busk.

To convict somebody of an offence, it is necessary to prove that the defendant was the person involved and that they committed all the elements of the offence. There is a famous solicitor who has just registered the rights to the title 'Mr Loophole' (and the www I think) and has made a lot of £££ spotting often quite elementary errors in prosecutions. (Failing to identify the defendant as the offender, failing to prove all the elements of the offence.)

As I am retired I have not easy access to current legal text books. I googled this and by the time I had reached page 5, the only stuff I had found related to cycling on the footway - mostly when it was made a fixed penaly offence.

Orbiter quote the Highways Act 1835 so the law has not fundamentally changed since I retired in 1997. I am confident that your interpretation of the law on driving onto the footway is wrong. (The Highway Code is a valuable document but lacks detail on the elements which must be proved to enable a successful prosecution.)