A driveway at home is designed for parking cars, of course, or providing a paved path between the garage or carport and the street.

But anyone with kids at home will tell you a driveway also serves as a playground — it’s a sidewalk for chalk-lined hopscotch pads, a track for scooters and bikes, a court for basketball and badminton games, even a runway, perhaps, for remote-controlled toys.

The driveway as converted to kiddy playground works well, until some adult intruder tries to steer a car onto the path, thinking a driveway is meant for driving.

There’s a way now to convert that driveway into a safety zone for children. Simply install a portable fence barrier called the kid-safe Driveway Net.

You can’t help but notice this fence: The netting, rising 3 feet high, is tinted to a bright shade of orange, the highly visible color used for traffic safety.

The concept for the Driveway Net fence unit is simple, as it stretches across the front of the driveway to seal it off from street traffic and create a safety zone behind the fence for kids to play.

The fence measures 15 feet in length and slips easily into anchor sleeves positioned below the ground on the edge of the pavement. When playtime is over, the fence retracts, much like a tape measure snaps back out of sight, so it’s easy to remove and stow.

Find the Driveway Net in the SkyMall catalog as item #253469 for $89.99. To order, or for more information, call 800-SKY-MALL or visit www.skymall.com.