The explosive rise in online shopping over lockdown has flooded our streets with delivery vans. Nothing wrong with that you might think. After all, home deliveries are convenient for many and replace a large number of car shopping trips with a smaller number undertaken by professional drivers. However, many aren’t entirely professional. In fact, in many cases they’re downright dangerous.
With the exception of pavements with road signs showing a car half on the road and half on the pavement, it’s illegal to drive on the pavement. For added clarity, here is an excerpt from a parliamentary briefing on the subject.
According to Tesco, their delivery drivers ‘need’ to park on the pavement. The company appears oblivious to the fact that it is not only illegal to drive on the pavement, it’s highly dangerous.
Many delivery firms, including Tesco, seem unaware that aside from the obstruction caused by pavement parking, the practice can be deadly. A four-year-old girl was killed in Liverpool by a delivery driver who didn’t want to hold up the traffic behind him. He pulled onto the pavement and killed the child as her mother looked on helplessly. This is not an isolated incident. Every year in Britain, drivers kill over 40 people as they walk on the pavement.
Bad Parking Awards 2021 – How to nominate
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Tony Williams
To be fair to Tesco, a lot depends on the individual driver. In the village where I live I was driving along a narrow lane and met a Tesco van coming the other way. To begin with we both had to wait for another vehicle which was blocking the road, but that then drove off the road onto the driveway of a house. I expected the Tesco van to put his nearside wheels onto the drive of another house, and then I could have passed him, but when he didn’t I got out and suggested he might make that manoeuvre. “I’m not allowed to,” he said. That contrasts with the driver of the van in your photo.
Vincent Edwards
As Tony says, not all supermarket delivery drivers park on the pavement. But far too many do – to the extent that I wonder if it’s part of their training (the drivers who don’t park on the pavement may not have completed that part of the course yet). I live on a very wide road. It’s not very busy for most of the day. But I rarely see a delivery van park anywhere other than on the pavement. It’s pretty scary when I’m walking past it on the pavement at the point where it suddenly drives off, the driver unaware of or indifferent to my presence. The wheels miss my feet by inches. A small child or a dog on a lead might not be so lucky.