Parking fines explosion
The exponential rise in parking tickets and fine revenue: About 17300 tickets a day. One every five seconds. About £1.3 billion a year. And less wardens. How & why?
The origin of the yellow line never was about obstruction, traffic flow or danger. These were always, and still are, covered by the kerb markings which are explained in the Highway Code. Prior to yellow lines, the police had to revert to unnecessary obstruction (Just being there), an offence that occurs in any road or street which was deemed to be unreasonable by the courts after two hours. When the yellow lines took its place, this was reduced to 20 minutes for loading, unloading, dropping off and picking up and this is how the police forces operated the system.
The councils are now treating yellow lines as kerb stripes and making it an instant offence to stop on them at all; allowing councils to automate parking regulation use CCTV and Camera cars to take an instant snapshot of a whole street. Of course if wardens need no longer time vehicles, they too can just ticket willy nilly and move on. This is wrong. They are treating yellow lines as kerb markings. This is why more tickets are issued with less wardens. Added to which the tickets are often not being issued there and then so the driver can see the problem and indeed take photos for appeal. Arriving three weeks later, it is often impossible to recall any detail at all. Then the coercive element that entices the driver to accept guilt and pay up now or face a larger fine. If an admission is obtained by coercion, how can it be legally valid?
Voters need to tell their councillors 'up with this we will not put' and threaten to vote accordingly when the time comes. That is what all politicians must learn. There are 38 million driver voters out there.
But the policy is counter productive for towns and cities who have to compete with retail parks who understand that commerce is based and depends on motor vehicles and provides free parking space. Why is it that councillors and their mandarins cannot see this as business people do? Many yellow lines could actually be replaced with meter bays which will still bring in revenue and custom and commerce too. But most of this isn't rational because it is more often part of the elitist ideological war against UK drivers
Since exposing them, councils have now taken
to putting down unnecessary kerb stripes. See it here
Works the scam
