Safe Speed Forums

Took it you were disagreeing with targeting people who block drives ( as in that to a house ) . EG- making it difficult by parking too close/accross the road ---thus preventing the resident getting car off road.

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

ah ha - crossed lines, I was saying that a £30 fine causes less misery to the person fined than the misery caused by the act of parking across or otherwise blocking someone else's drive.

I was referring to Paul's point that people who cause 'misery' deserve everything they get.

_________________
COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

[quote="handyah ha - crossed lines, I was saying that a £30 fine causes less misery to the person fined than the misery caused by the act of parking across or otherwise blocking someone else's drive.

I was referring to Paul's point that people who cause 'misery' deserve everything they get.[/quote]

Agree with you on that - nothing worse than jumping through hoops to get car of road ,then find that some kind(blind) person can't see car parked on your property.

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

I didn't think parking vultures could do anything about vehicles parked over driveways, blocking access, etc. They can only deal with "parking on or near painted markings which look something like the diagrams in the TSRGD and even if they're wrong we'll do you anyway".

Except in London. Then they can do you for parking off the road (and they'll try this even if you're parked on private property with permission) or parking more than 50cm from the kerb. Neither of which are really bad things, and by that I mean there is nothing wrong with parking off the road or more than 50cm from the kerb UNLESS you are causing an obstruction by doing so. Then the police can do something about it anyway.

_________________
Andrew.

Same opinion , but the ones that can't see why /or see a car in a drive certainly see the vultures.
Yet the old version weren't that bad. If they could use some discretion for a bloke working in say a shop and parked nearby i always found that they would, IF asked politely. Was that the reason - being remembered for being nice

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

More than 30 quid in London, and that's if you're "lucky" enough to "get away" with just the basic ticket. What about the poor sods who've been towed/clamped within minutes of the original ticket being slapped on the windscreen, without giving them any chance of moving the car themselves first? You're then looking at, typically, a three figure sum to get the car back from the pound or have the clamp released, PLUS the costs you incur using alternative modes of transport, PLUS the penalty (which could be quite serious depending on your job or status w.r.t. friends/family - e.g. if you're a registered carer and need your car to get to a dependents residence...) of losing access to your vehicle for however long it takes the prats to release the car once their extortionate fine has been paid (and yes, extortion is the ONLY way to describe hitting someone with a 3 figure fine for what could be as little as 5 minutes of parking beyond the validity of your ticket or the parking restrictions in that area).

Oh, and if your car has been towed without your knowledge, just trying to find out exactly what's happened to it can be a lengthy game of phone tennis, depending on how many potential car pounds it could have been taken to and whether or not the pound actually knows they've got your car.

And this all assumes the ticket has been correctly issued in the first place...

_________________
Chris

of course, someone in that situation wouldn't be so stupid as to risk leaving the car parked illegally, would they? Oh, wait, are you saying that they have an inaliable right to park where they like for as long as they want?

_________________
COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

They never seem to be where they are need.



They seem to foucs on easy targets

_________________
Oct 11 Birmingham Half Marathon. I am running for the British Heart Foundation.
http://www.justgiving.com/Rob-Taylor

What, like this?

(The dropped kerb leads to a solid looking fence)

_________________
Andrew.

I think these two pictures sum up why people get annoyed at the system.

I have to pull out of this road every morning the police drive past every day. Oh well, lets make sure we get the firemen,as they are the real danger.

_________________
Oct 11 Birmingham Half Marathon. I am running for the British Heart Foundation.
http://www.justgiving.com/Rob-Taylor

When some wardens are ready to pounce the second your ticket/meter expires (or sometimes even before then - they may already have the clamping/removal truck parked up just waiting for the clock to tick over...), it only needs to take the slightest of things to go wrong in your schedule for your return to the vehicle to be delayed just long enough. Let's say you know that the walk back to the car from where you are normally takes 10 minutes, so you set off 15 minutes before the expiry time. But oh, it's been pissing down whilst you were away from the car, and the pedestrian underpass which forms part of this 10 minute route has been flooded out, requiring you to make a 6 minute detour...

But whatever the reason for parking beyond the validity of your ticket, that isn't the point. What IS the point is that local authorities are allowed to massively over-react to even the most minor of parking infringments, quite in contrast to how you portrayed the situation. If it really was just a 30 quid fine for every possible parking infringment AND if fines were issued purely on the grounds of "is the vehicle causing an obstruction? is the vehicle parked in a way that causes a safety hazard? has the vehicle been parked there for more than 5-10 minutes beyond the end of validity?" then yeah, we'd all be laughing. It isn't. Fines are higher, tickets are issued for the most infinitesimal breach of the rules, some of which seem to have been drawn up purely to make like as difficult as possible for motorists to stick to them, and some of which quite simply ARE impossible to stick to (e.g. parking bays which are too narrow to accommodate anything larger than a Smart car). And then there's the tickets incorrectly issued, something I have personal experience of...

Last year Hammersmith & Fulham accused me of parking on single yellows during their restricted hours, and wanted 50 quid within 14 days, or 100 quid otherwise. Eventually they threw the ticket out after I proved that the one and only sign they provided for motorists heading into the area along the road I used, that would have listed the times was, in fact, pointing in the wrong direction and therefore impossible to see from a passing vehicle. But if I hadn't been absolutely convinced that I was in the right, and if I hadn't then been able to return to the area to gather evidence, I'd have had to cough up the cash despite it being the local authority at fault. How many other motorists DID cough up their 50 quids assuming the tickets they'd received for parking on that street were valid??? I know the sign was pointing in the wrong direction for at least 5 months, and every time I visited the street on my evidence gathering trips I saw at least one warden patrolling - obviously a prime spot for scamming genuinely innocent motorists out of their hard earned.

But hey, if you think none of this is anything to get concerned about, then that's your call. Just don't assume it's all as rosy elsewhere in the country as you make it out to be in your area.

_________________
Chris

In view of what you have said about the fence, and looking at the obvious repair to the road tarmac, I would say this is less a dropped kerb, and more a bit of dodgy kerb reinstatement after some road works!
Even the double yellows finish without a bar end, and so are not enforcable - AIR?

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I'm guessing there might have used to be a gate or something, I don't know. More photos (and a dictionary definition of the word "continous", which the council described these lines as being) are available if you look at the link.


Oh yeah

_________________
Andrew.

Reminds me of some of the residential roads near Aylesbury town centre. To stop people parking on them to get free access to town (you know, so that people can spend money at local businesses during their lunch breaks) they double yellowed all the residential streets and made them no parking from 8:30AM - 5:30PM. Apparently this wouldn't hurt residents as they'd all be merrily on their way to work by this point.

Unless of course one morning you didn't leave your house until 8:31AM in which case you'd find yourself with a parking ticket as the wardens were lying in wait.

No, I wouldn't serve these people either

Love Ashford Borough Council parking wardens. I try to have change in my pocket whenever I need it but this isn't possible every time. So the other day I park up, walk briskly to the nearest ATM, nip next door to the newsagent to buy mints to get some change, walk briskly back to car to purchase my ticket and find an 'effing parking fine on my windscreen. I must have been gone 4 mins or so.

But I accept they were only doing their job. I certainly wouldn't want them to step on any mines or anything. And given the fact that the chappie must have been hiding in a bush to ticket me, I suppose its better that they are ticketing my car than watching lone women in quiet parks and footpaths. Up a tree. In a gimp mask.

_________________
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

A scheme like that might be semi-acceptable if residents could stay parked on display of a free permit, but simply banning all parking between certain hours is, well, dumb. Not just for the person who's running a minute late, but for all the people who's lives don't fit neatly into the councils idealistic notion of an entire citizenry dutifully heading off to their cosy 9-5 jobs...

_________________
Chris

Then combine it with the "alternating sides of the roads on alternating days" schemes that some areas have implemented (some Birmingham suburbs). I was done one fine Saturday morning for being parked after 8:30 in a spot that was perfectly legal the day before - apparently to prevent the parking spots being hogged they change the side of the road each day, so you have to move your car to the other side of the road.

My host (who didn't have a car at the time) failed to mention the odd rules as it never crossed her mind. I haven't got a clue as to how this scheme is supposed to work if you are sick or go away on holiday. However the vultures were there the moment the time limit expired.

At the end of the day, this is the way councils think. They work in the civil service and assume that the rest of the world is the same, they haven't heard of home working, overtime, time in lieu of night shifts.

If you want to keep shoppers out of the town centre[1] but allow residents to park then I don't see why they can't give residents a number of permits, enough for their own cars and also a couple to shove in their guests cars if someone is staying for a few days. You can encode the address in non-human-readable form[2] somewhere on the permit and then if they're found on eBay or whatever something can be done about it

[1]Quite why councils are so keen on this I don't know. Presumably they make more money by preventing me from collecting my partner from her work at lunchtime and then popping into town for half an hour to spend a few quid on food at a local business.

[2]so that burglars don't know who is at home and who isnt

Councils? Think??? Not in my area they don't...

_________________
Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

[quote="Rewolf"]Then combine it with the "alternating sides of the roads on alternating days" schemes that some areas have implemented (some Birmingham suburbs).
quote]

Used to something similar in parts of Coventry - was a good shouting match some time back in local paper -the sides changed at strange hours ( something like midnight) .Think people power changed it.

Bottyburp - council employees caught thinking -"thinking does not exist in this organisation"

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on