Fined £260 for parking in a parents' space and leaving kids in the car

Rachel Bailey-Everest mother of three children accused a private parking firm of having 'no humanity' after she was fined £260 for parking in a parents' space and leaving her kids in the car.

Ms Bailey-Everest had used the special parking bay twice within the space four days to use a nearby shop.

She was shocked when she received the fines which were because she left her three children in the car instead of taking them with her to the store on both occasions. She tried to appeal against the fines but was told that she had failed to comply with the parking terms.

Rachel, from Cringleford, Norfolk, said: 'I feel so annoyed. It's just an easy way of making money out of people.

The first ticket was at the East of England Co-op in Norwich, Norfolk on August 24. 'I just saw a parents' space and parked there. I thought that will do, my boy's not well and I need to get in and get home. Her little boy was not very well at the time and he had fallen asleep in the car. She decided to leave three-year-old Benjamin with older sisters Sofia, aged 10, and Amalia, aged seven, while she popped into the shop

Rachel added: 'I thought the space was close to the store so one of the girls could come and see me if they needed to. I think I was in the store for about eight minutes.'

The second ticket was on August 28, using the same space and leaving her three children in the vehicle for around 11 minutes.

A few days later, the stay-at-home mum said she received a parking charge notice (PCN) from National Parking Enforcement (NPE), which manages the car park. It told her she had to pay a fine of £100.

Shortly afterwards, she received another PCN, but did not check the dates on the letters and assumed they were both for the same incident. She appealed against the fine, but it was turned down.

Rachel then received another letter saying she had not paid the second fine, and was being charged an extra £60 for debt recovery agents' fees - totalling £160.

She said: 'I didn't even know it was against the rules to leave your kids in the car in a parents' parking space.

Rachel went back and read the small print on the sign and it did say you've got to be accompanied out of the vehicle by a child under the age of 12. which she admits she didn't see.

Source  dailymail 

New Zealander paints his own parking restrictions

A New Zealand man who has unlawfully painted yellow line parking restrictions outside his house in Wellington for the last 20 years says he has done so to improve road safety and to protest against gentrification.

Russell Taylor said it was necessary to stop cars from parking dangerously in an increasingly busy street. The city council says the lines are illegal and will be removed.

Mr Taylor has lived on Holloway Road since 1979, he says he has painted the lines intermittently over the last two decades when the parking problem in his street has become especially bad.

The roads have changed a lot since he has lived there and a lot more people now have cars. Mr Taylor sees it as a protest against the failure of the council to take action.

"Cars park on blind corners, and on occasions fire lorries and rubbish collection vehicles have been unable to turn around because vehicles are parked on both sides of the road.

"More recently we have had the additional problem of drivers going far too fast down our narrow street."

A city council spokesman, Richard MacLean, told Stuff New Zealand that it was aware there was a parking problem in Holloway Road, and it will shortly be discussed by residents and councillors.

The spokesman added that it was unlikely that Mr Taylor would be punished for his long-running, unofficial road-marking campaign.

Blue badge parking permits to cover 'hidden disabilities' in England

The Department for Transport  have said that blue badge parking permits are to be made available for people in England with "hidden disabilities" such as autism or mental health problems from next year.

The current rules do not explicitly exclude hidden disabilities, however councils' interpretations can vary.

Similar changes have come into effect in Scotland and Wales.
When the changes to the blue badge scheme in England are introduced, they will extend eligibility to:

• people who cannot make a journey without "a risk of serious harm to their health and safety" or that of others, such as young children with autism
• people for whom travel causes "very considerable psychological distress"
• and those with considerable difficulty walking, meaning "both the physical act and experience of walking"

Currently about 2.4 million disabled people in England have a blue badge as part of the system that was introduced in 1970 costing £10 in order to make access easier for disabled people.

It allow holders to park for free in pay-and-display spaces across the UK and for up to three hours on yellow lines.

The blue badge concessions do not apply to privately-run car parks. They also can not be used in central London, where residents need to apply for a special permit, although they do provide an exemption from the congestion charge.



For more on this story please visit the BBC

Ford Mondeo Fittes with Micro Reversing Sensors

This 67 reg Ford Mondeo was fitted with a Dolphin Automotive DMS400 micro sensor kit in "muddy grey" by one of our nationwide installers. I think you will agree a great match at a great price.

The DMS400 kit comes with an audio buzzer which alerts at a more frequest rate the closer you get to an obstacle.  The beep becomes continuous at a distance of 30cm to alert the driver to stop reversing.

Man puts rude note inside penalty notice holder on car parked over two parent-and-child bays

After seeing a car straddling two parent and baby spaces, Mike from Woking in Surrey decided to prank a fellow motorist with a fake parking notice.

 The offending Land Rover Freelander was outside a branch of Tesco in Weybridge, Dorset, on Monday evening

He said: “There were lots of spaces. I just didn’t understand why they’d parked like that, it was just ridiculous.#

Source image Mercury Press

“The note wasn’t meant to be nasty, it was just a spur of the moment thing to highlight the bad parking.

“I’m a rep driving around all the time and it annoys when I can’t get a space because people have parked stupidly."

Mike said he was given a ticket a few years ago" after overstaying by ten minutes. At the time he just ripped the notice off his vehicle, stuck it in the glovebox and forget about it, but when he was in the car park on Monday night he saw the perfect opportunity to use the penalty notice holder.

Mike maintains the note wasn't malicious, adding: “I wrote something short that wasn’t too offensive as I didn’t want to be using all sorts of horrible words.
"I just wanted to shock them into parking sensibly.”

Source image Mercury Press

Mike had spotted the strange parking as he entered the supermarket and 20 minutes later returned to his vehicle and scribbled the note on the back of an envelope in a black marker pen.

After Mike tucked the note inside the yellow wallet and placed it on the car windscreen he went back to his van and waited to see if the car owner would emerge and read it.

The joker added: “I’m 49, so old enough to know better, but hung around afterwards for 20 minutes.
"No-one appeared and I got bored so left.”

Read a longer version of the story here Sun

University Allows Students To Pay For Parking Tickets With Food Donations

We came cross this story published on Aprils Fools but it was no joke!

University of Florida President W. Kent Fuchs announced on Twitter that people who had been cited for parking violations on campus over the past year could get amnesty for their ticket by donating food.

"For many years, parking tickets have been a source of contention between the university administration, and our students, staff, faculty, alumni, and visitors," Fuchs begins in the the 38-second video posted by UF's twitter account.

"I am pleased to announced, on this first day of April, that UF will have an amnesty program for parking fines. And today I'm calling on Scott Fox, the director of Transportation and Parking Services to create by tomorrow, a program that will allow the past twelve months of parking tickets to be forgiven."

But, as nearly people found out this week, the UF president wasn't kidding. According a tweet from Fuchs, nearly 2,000 citations were dismissed in exchange for 9,455 canned food donations.

The "Food for Fines" program applied to all unpaid parking citations issued by the University of Florida Office of Transportation and Parking Services between April 1st, 2017 and April 1, 2018.

Donations included toiletries, canned and boxed nonperishable foods, baby formula and diapers. Participants needed to bring in at least five items per citation and there was no limit on the amount of citations that could be forgiven.

The canned food donations will head for the shelves of the school's Field and Fork Pantry.

For more on this story please visit https://www.iheart.com

 

Woman jailed for tampering with parking ticket in Dubai

A 25-year-old German woman has been sentenced to three months in jail after she tampered with a parking ticket.

The Court charged the woman with forgery after the public prosecution recommended for strictest penalty for her.

The offence took place on June 16, 2016. A ticket inspector noticed that one of the cars had a ticket on where the month had been changed by hand. "The fare paid and the parking time did not match," the inspector told the prosecutor.

"It looked obvious that the ticket was issued on May 16 but the car owner changed the date on the ticket to June 16 and left it on the front of the car. I reported the matter to my superior and then to the police."

The defendant admitted that she had got a paid parking ticket on May 16, 2016 and she used the same ticket on June 16, 2016, by changing the month from 5 to 6 so as to avoid buying a new ticket.

For more on this story please see khaleejtimes