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6:00am, Wednesday 28 November 2018

Car park line marking is a strategy that helps to keep drivers and pedestrians safe on your commercial property. If your parking area is just an empty lot with no clearly marked parking spaces then everyone will simply park where they will.

Drivers may automatically park in lines, leaving enough space between rows so that other cars can drive through easily, but this is unlikely to maximise the number of cars that can park on your lot. Drivers are also unlikely to have pedestrian safety as a priority when they are parking on an unlined lot, which is why car park line marking is so important.

Marking out car parking spaces, maximum driving speed and arrows to direct traffic through your carpark are all strategies that help to increase customer safety. The problem is that these are not always sufficient, particularly in multi-story car parks.

Strategies to improve safety in multi-story car parks

It’s not unknown for drivers to lose control of their vehicles in car parks or to put their foot on the accelerator instead of the brake. Severe injuries and even deaths have occurred due to driver errors, none of which can be fixed by car park line marking, instead requiring bollards and other strong perimeter edging to prevent vehicles overshooting into pedestrian areas.

The current Australian Standard for a vehicle barrier is that it should be able to withstand a 30 kilo newton force, which in real money is a mid-size sedan. The problem is that our cars are increasing in size and an SUV running into one of these barriers is going to pack a bigger punch than 30 kilo newtons. The UK have already recognised this problem and their Standards require barriers to withstand a 150 kilo newton force, which is much more realistic.

At the end of the day, all car park owners can do is to make sure that they have professional car park line marking and barriers in place that meet Australian Standards. The best way is to perform a safety review every year, making sure that everything complies with Australian Standards, for example perimeter barriers and balustrades, guardrails along staircases and walkways, and high impact barriers.

For more information on car park line marking and other safety strategies in Brisbane, call us on 07 5549 6733 or send us an email.