Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Driving me crazy

We have always had problems with commuter parking here where I live and since the area was made a 'home zone' five or six years ago the problems have got far worse. A home zone is where cars and pedestrians share the same surface so there are not many pavements with kerbs and parking bays are in a different coloured brickwork because there are also no yellow lines or road signs on poles, except at the entrances to the area.
A lot of the commuters work in the new offices that have been built on the re-development sites close by and some even park here and travel away on the train because the railway station is also very near.
So they all start arriving from 7am to try to get somewhere to park and most of them cannot park properly anyway. Every day while I'm having a cup of tea I can hear them revving up and taking ages just to get their cars into a space. Sometimes, I look out of the window and watch them while they struggle because there are times when any normal person with a blindfold on could park a double decker bus in the space they are aiming for while they can't even get their tiny cars in the same space.
It can quite often be hilarious watching, especially when I hear a 'souped' up small car trying to sound like a formula one racing car with the driver struggling to get it into a space three times as long. Then when the driver emerges, it's some young lad who swaggers off looking really pleased with himself because he managed to park!
Some of the older drivers have difficulty too. I watched one yesterday stuggling to squeeze his small car into a space that was nowhere near big enough but he didn't give up, he parked the front half in the space and left the back end up on the pavement in front of a planter!
Some are so badly parked that they cause an obstruction and that's when the statutory fines are stuck on the windscreens by the local Police Community Support Officers, or towed away if they can get the lorry down here. Sometimes I wonder if these people ever passed a driving test!

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