Tesco, your pavement parking delivery drivers are endangering lives

The explosive rise in online shopping 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. Except that they aren't entirely professional. In fact, in many cases they are downright dangerous.

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 is highly dangerous.

Why is any of this important?

Quite apart from the obstruction caused by pavement parking, the practice can be deadly. Last year, a four-year-old girl was on a pavement when a delivery driver - who didn't want to hold up the traffic behind him - pulled onto the pavement and killed the child as her mother looked on helplessly. This is not an isolated incident. Last year in Britain, drivers killed 43 people while they walked on the pavement.

The more we searched online, the more examples we found of people complaining to Tesco about their drivers driving and parking on pavements. Some have bceome so frustrated, they have resorted to posting videos on Youtube.

When we tweeted Tesco to remind them that driving on pavements is illegal, not to mention dangerous, and to ask them to revise their position, we received no reply. At the time of writing, this question has been retweeted over 50 times, but still no reply from Tesco.

Of course, Tesco is not the only company whose drivers break the law, but the company's seemingly flagrant disregard for the law and refusal to engage in conversation about the dangerous pavement parking it advocates are striking.

If you object to the danger caused by pavement driving and parking and you shop at Tesco please consider tweeting them at @Tesconews or contacting them via tesco.com/help/

For our part, we have written to Tesco Chief Executive, Dave Lewis, in the hope he can answer our question.

Update: 25 January 2018

We have received the following reply from Tesco. It appears their social media team may have gone rogue...

If your road continues to be plagued by dangerous and illegal pavement parking, you may wish to resort to this...

Pavement parking and the law

With the exception of those pavements clearly marked for parking - the accompanying road sign shows a car half on the road and half on the pavement - it is illegal to drive on the pavement and as such a matter for the police. For added clarity, here is an excerpt from a parliamentary briefing on the subject.

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Not only are we voted to be an ethical company, but we also campaign for sustainable transport. Sometimes that means protesting until a school gets the zebra crossing they've been refused, or running 60 roadshows this year to encourage people out of their cars, or fixing bicycles for free. Supporting this work is easy - you simply have to take out insurance with us. We provide home insurance, cycle insurance, travel insurance and breakdown cover - all while putting concern for the environment at the heart of all we do.