A stilt car park is a partly covered parking space on a building's ground floor. It differs from a "open parking place," which is an uncovered parking area supplied within the building's premises. Stilt parking is commonly found in large cities around the world, especially in Europe and North America. The term comes from the fact that these spaces look like small platforms that stand beneath the cars to provide additional height for drivers to see over other objects such as trucks delivering goods to stores or buses loading or unloading passengers. In most cases, vehicles entering a stilt parking spot are driven up onto a platform that resembles a small staircase. The driver then exits the vehicle and proceeds inside the building to visit a store or restaurant, for example. When the driver returns, they find their car still parked next to others, without anyone inside it. This forms a line of parked cars along the street with no one standing beside them. In this way, stilt parking helps make roads safer by removing some of the obstacles that might be hidden under high-sided vehicles. Stilt parking was originally designed for buildings without enough room inside their garage doors to safely accommodate large vehicles. Before this type of parking became popular, people needed access to both sides of every vehicle to load or unload passengers or cargo.