h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

People's hero, or sad muppet who should know better than to wear his underpants over his, er... tights? You decide

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3112670.stm

Well are these people parking where they should not be???

Ridiculous!

(I've never understood car owners' belief that they have a God-given right to park their machines anywhere they like... There's graffiti at the end of my street that says 'Shame on you Haringey Council for ticketing on Sunday, the Holy Day' that makes my blood boil. I always want to graffiti back "If you want to park in my street, sunshine, you can damn well pay £50 for a parking permit like everyone else does" but have never quite got round to it)

I was watching a program about clampers in I think it was New York City....

People's attitudes seemed to be that they could and SHOULD be able to park where, when, and how they liked. One woman got so ticked off about being "booted" that she drove off with the clamp attached to her car. It shreaded the undecariage of her caar, causing 1000s of dollars wotrth of damage... over a $75 parking ticket, and assaulted the parking guy and the tow-truck driver which is a felony.....

However, the best bit was the guy who went to the car auction for cars left unclaimed after being clamped, bought a real bargain, but found his car clamped when he got back to it.... he owed a couple of thousand dollars in parking fines. Served the idiot right.

I do know that in the UK, there are companies which do the clamping who will clamp anything, even cars in people's own parking space. It is often a case of their word against the owners'. They have also been known to fight other clampers over clamping rights, and take personal "tips" not to clamp a car.

I was watching one of those "undercover" programs from the UK on the shady clampers.

I've seen documentaries about those people too. If this bloke is only going after them, I'm right with him, but I don't think he is.

My van was almost clamped once when I was helping someone move house. It was in a block of council flats in Camden (north London), and one would hope that a local authority would employ a responsible company to do that. I have no beef with Camden Council (who were only trying to improve the quality of life for their tenants), nor with the clamper who was getting his clamp ready as I was going back to my van after the job was finished (and I know that under English law, your vehicle is still yours to drive away until either the padlock goes on the clamp, or whilst there's still at least one wheel on the ground if it's being lifted onto a tow-truck).

But if I ever find out who it was that called the clampers when it was quite obvious I was there for a legitimate reason...

I believe that the law is the same in regards to the clamp. However, once the tow truck has the hook on you, it is gone.

They don't use clamps here in Ottawa, or I haven't seen them. They just like to ticket or tow.

My mother recently got a ticket for letting the meter run out. She intends to fight it. Not because it had just run out or hadn't run out, or even because she was parked quite legitimately. Apparently, she is going to fight it becausse she couldn't find her car as she thought it was on a different strret.... that and that my grandnephew wouldn't leave the Parliament Buildings and so she was late.

For some reason she thinks it a travesty that she got a ticket in the first place..... she is quite indignant.

I want to fine the idiots-- mothers mostly-- who park in my driveway, or block it. Yeah... Sally has a lesson... but THAT IS NOT YOUR BLOODY DRIVEWAY!!!

Thank you.

Let me try this again in full-on British English, not my kooky Colorado-British English!!!

"I'll be happy to fine the imbeciles-- mums mostly-- who park in my [what do you call a driveway!??]..."

We call it a driveway

We used to live on a relatively narrow street. Our laneway (driveway) entered the street 1 carlength from the entrance of the laneway across the street. The number of people who would park, well away from the curb, smack across from our driveway. Since there would invariably someone parked immediately behind them, so one had to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to inch out of you driveway with your back end into the space where the lane across the street was.

A couple of times my father nudged the car on the other side. I don't think he particularily cared when he did.

There was one time when some jerk parked blocking our laneway, on the no-parking side of the street, and my father had to park across the street. So he called the police. The policeman came along and did nothing about the guy blocking the laneway, but ticketed my father.... and HE was parked perfectly legally!

I hope he fought that one

Clampers, traffic wardens - scum of the earth

There has been talk around my way of issuing the traffic wardens with stab proof vests. Now that says something about the popularity of the local council's traffic management policies

That's very sad...

I can't believe this. It's eight minutes to nine pm and Mom still has a student in the house. And she's definately not in high school. That tells you how popular Mom is.

I've got a different view of traffic wardens GD, even though I was a delivery driver for 12 years.

There's a little stretch of road in Crouch End, right outside a number of shops. It's only four or five cars long, and it's a single yellow line. Two of the shops are a bank and a newsagent, so there are always people parking there 'just for 5 minutes while they nip in to buy a paper/some fags/a lottery ticket/deposit a cheque/use the cash machine'.

There are so many people 'just nipping in for 5 minutes' that the entire stretch is constantly occupied all through the day by cars parking on a yellow line.

Driving a van? Need to make a delivery to one of those shops? Tough s**t. The car drivers just *have* to park wherever the f**k they like, and stuff everybody else.

Tow the damn lot of them away as far as I'm concerned.

Awww... it's ok... it's ok....

As a counter point to that, around our hospital the council introduced a limited parking scheme so that non resident cars can only be parked for a maximum of 4 hours. This causes serious problems for nursing staff when their shifts last 7.5 hours, and there is no room on the site to extend the staff car park. (And not much in the way of useful public transport as an alternative whilst we're on the subject.)

A number of staff who have left have said that the deciding factor in their decision was the repeated £30 fines for 'illegal' parking. And once these staff leave, their replacements are damn hard to recruit. Usually we have to run for some time with agency staff at twice or more the going hourly rate.

Once, when were were taking a member of our Kosovar family (we had sponsored them during the war) to the hosiptal, he found out how much we had to pay to park in the lot at the hospital.... something like $5 for a half hour and we had been there for several hours, with a daily limit of $25....

He commented that he had been thinking, if and when he could return home to Kosovo, that he had a little piece of land in the middle of the city that he would like to make into a car-park. Since parking is very scarce there it could be profitable.

I joked that if he charged the prices they charged here, he'd be rich in no time.

In fact, he did take most of his family back, and he was able to get his land back (it had been confiscated by the Serbs) and he did make a car-park.

Nice!

Dragonfly - surely there's quite a simple solution: buy a wheelclamp!

A wheelclamp indeed... but you see, I want them out of the way as quick as possible. That keeps them in the way for awhile...

I've had my bad experiences with traffic wardens too GD, so they're not all perfect little s AFAIC.

I lived for a while on a narrow street which had houses along one side and small factories and workshops on the other. If all the residents parked on the road, it wouldn't be wide enough for anything to get by so we all had to park with two wheels on the pavement (which is illegal in London) or face getting one side of our vehicle scratched to buggery.

About once a month we'd all go out to find that the entire street had been ticketed by a zealous early morning traffic warden

One of the better bits of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was when they discovered the traffic warden in the back of their getaway van, one of them says "I ing hate traffic wardens" and they all pile in to the back to sort him out... rather obvious, but good fun nevertheless.