Careless car owners are driving on public footpaths in Glenrothes in a bid to shave seconds off their commute.
Fears have been expressed that somebody could be killed unless selfish motorists who have been taking to pavements in the Newcastle area of the town curb their conduct behind the wheel.
The issue has been brought to light by local councillor Altany Craik, who said that drivers were using the paths as potentially deadly shortcuts.
“It has maybe been more luck than judgement so far that nobody has been seriously hurt by doing this,” he said.
“People are driving on pavements and enough is enough.
“We really need people to start thinking more. We don’t want a tragedy.”
While many properties in Newcastle are situated close to Golf Course Road, one of the west end’s main thoroughfares, accessing them by car requires drivers to take a detour of up to nearly a mile.
Effectively a large cul-de-sac, one local resident also told The Courier that as well as drivers taking to the pavements, cars were also routinely parking on verges, creating huge access problems for cars and buses attempting to get by.
However, primarily concerned about those drivers using pavements as roads, Mr Craik has alerted Fife Council’s transportation team, as well as local police officers, and a meeting is scheduled to take place later this week to discuss the matter.
Calling on drivers to show common sense, he said that failing to do so was jeopardising lives.
“These are reasonably wide paths but they are not access paths,” he continued.
“People are using these as shortcuts because they don’t want to drive the long way round after coming off Golf Course Road.
“I don’t know what the answer could be.
“We could put in bollards and that might be the right thing to do, but there are people who will probably just try to drive around them.”
