On 23 January an 87-year-old driver crashed into the front of Kerrie Road Bakery in Glen Waverley, according to 3AW. The station reported that the car narrowly missed customers inside. No injuries were reported.
The bakery's owner told 3AW the driver seemed to have no idea what had happened. On 3AW Drive, host Jacqui Felgate said that half a metre to the left and someone could have been killed, and asked whether drivers should be re-tested at 80.
That debate will keep going. This piece is about something narrower: the gap between a parked car and a shop counter, and why it is so often just a sheet of glass.
Accidental crashes are the common kind
Ram raids get the headlines, but most vehicles that end up inside shops arrive by mistake. The usual story is short. A driver pulls into a bay facing the shop, means to brake, presses the accelerator, and the car is through the window before they work out what went wrong. Sometimes it's a car rolling out of an angled bay. Sometimes it's a driver who has a medical episode, or a collision on the road that pushes one car onto the footpath.
Age gets talked about most, and it was the angle 3AW took. It is not only older drivers, though. Pedal mix-ups, distraction and a car left in the wrong gear happen at every age. A shopfront doesn't know who is driving.
Why shopping strips are exposed
Look along almost any suburban shopping strip in Melbourne and you'll see the same layout. Parking bays, often angled or nose-in, run straight up to the kerb. Behind the kerb is a footpath a couple of metres wide. Behind that is a glass shopfront with tables, a counter or a queue just inside it.
From a driver's seat, the only things between the bonnet and the shop are a kerb and maybe a concrete wheel stop. Neither of them is designed to stop a moving car:
- Kerbs are there for drainage and to mark the road edge. A car going over one at low speed barely notices.
- Wheel stops help drivers park gently. A car that accelerates into one tends to ride straight over it.
- Planter boxes and bench seats can help if they are heavy and anchored, but many are free-standing and simply get pushed along.
We haven't seen the Kerrie Road site, and we're not suggesting anything about its layout. The pattern above is general, and it repeats across hundreds of strips.
What physically stops a car at low speed
A car that hits a shopfront by accident is usually travelling slowly, often from a standing start. That changes what a barrier needs to do. It doesn't need to stop a truck at highway speed. It needs to stop a passenger car within a short distance, before the glass, without folding over.
That comes down to three things:
- A footing, not just a post. A steel bollard set deep into a proper footing, or bolted through a substantial slab, transfers the hit into the ground. One surface-fixed to thin paving with short bolts may simply snap off at the base.
- Spacing. Bollards need to be close enough that a car can't slip between them, while leaving enough room for people, prams and wheelchairs. Hostile vehicle guidance commonly works to a clear gap of about 1.2 metres.
- Position. They need to sit between the bays and the glass, ideally near the kerb line, so a car is stopped before it reaches people on the footpath, not just before it reaches the window.
The council question
This is where many shop owners get stuck. In most strips the footpath outside a shop is council land, not the tenant's. A business can't put bollards on it without council involvement. Some councils have installed protective bollards in busy shopping precincts. Others haven't.
If your frontage is on public land, the useful first step is a conversation with your council's traffic or local laws team, with a few photos showing the bay layout. If your business has a private forecourt, setback or car park, you usually control that space and can act on it directly. Our FAQ covers where the line generally falls.
What owners can check this week
- Stand where a parked car's front bumper would be and look at what is directly in line with it inside your shop: tables, a queue, a play area, a counter?
- Check whether the bays in front of you are angled or nose-in, which points cars straight at the glass.
- Note any existing planters or posts and whether they are fixed down or free-standing.
- If you're near a corner, a slip lane or a pedestrian crossing, note that too. Cars that leave the road after a collision tend to do it at those spots.
None of this predicts that a crash will happen. It just tells you whether, if one does, anything stands between the car and your customers. In Glen Waverley in January, as 3AW's host put it, the margin was about half a metre.