Which driver violated the parking rules?

Explanation

None; all three drivers have parked in accordance with the rules.

The blue sign with the letter "P" permits parking at this place, and the plate beneath it shows how the vehicle should be positioned. The key point is that parking on the pavement or its edge is permitted only for passenger cars, motorcycles, mopeds and bicycles, and then only where a "P" sign with such a plate is posted. All other vehicles, including lorries, must stand at the edge of the carriageway.

Now read the picture by that rule: the lorry is standing at the edge of the carriageway parallel to the kerb — that is, exactly where it is required to be. The passenger car and the motorcycle are on the raised surface beside the kerb and within the sign's zone — that is, exactly where the plate has permitted. So nobody has committed an offence.

The reason for this distinction is weight and dimensions: the wheels of a heavy lorry break the pavement slabs and the utility covers beneath them, and its tall body effectively takes the whole width of the pavement from pedestrians and drives them onto the carriageway. The exam trap works both ways: some choose the lorry because it is the only different vehicle in the scene, and others choose the car and the motorcycle because they suppose that being on the pavement is always an offence. The plate beneath the sign invalidates precisely that assumption.

• The lorry is the largest and most suspect vehicle in the scene, but it has done exactly what the law requires of it: stopping at the edge of the carriageway rather than on the pavement. • Parking on the pavement is in itself an offence, but not at a place where a "P" sign with a parking-method plate is posted and the vehicle is a car or a motorcycle.

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