Another fixed penalty notice

[1nvest]

I've been caught yet again driving around unfamiliar back streets, turned into a road at the wrong time where the sign indicating restricted times wasn't really visible until you had already turned into the road (and the sign/writing is rather small, easily missed when you're also navigating around busy roads). Another £65 when paid within 14 days, otherwise £130. Does very much feel like visitor entrapment. Fine when you're familiar with a area, a risk/penalty for others to bolster Council revenues. I also note the Greater London council tax element increase has also been increased by the maximum

So I've opted to protest, in the form of being rid of my multiple waste bins and have ordered a large general waste bin into which everything will go. Apparently if I'd ordered that next week it would have cost £15, whereas this week it remains free. Maybe I'll revert towards council waste savings if/when the council decides not to discriminate against those with only two eyes instead of three - one for the road, another for the speedometer, another telescopic vision eye that can see around corners and through overhanging trees.

[bungeejumper]

Let me get this straight. You've been fined for driving in a restricted area outside the permitted hours because you didn't see the signs. (Commiserations, I once got a parking ticket in a street where the signs that prohibited all parking on Tuesdays were obscured by a line of council trucks that were, er, parked there. And on a Tuesday too. )

But the logic of getting your revenge on the council by filling your general bin with recyclable waste is lost on me. For one thing, the only impact will be felt by an unsuspecting world that will be poorer and more environmentally polluted for your efforts. And for another thing, councils can (and do) issue fixed penalty fines if they catch you. Quite large ones, too.

The first stage will be that you'll find a label on your bin that explains why the binmen have refused it. Your only recourse at that stage will be to empty the bin and sift through the contents - the plastic, the plant matter, the bottles, the porridge and the dog turds. Lovely.

The next stage, if you do it again, will be the fine and a possible court summons. Are you sure you've thought this through?

BJ

[Watis]

Let me get this straight. You've been fined for driving in a restricted area outside the permitted hours because you didn't see the signs. (Commiserations, I once got a parking ticket in a street where the signs that prohibited all parking on Tuesdays were obscured by a line of council trucks that were, er, parked there. And on a Tuesday too. )

But the logic of getting your revenge on the council by filling your general bin with recyclable waste is lost on me. For one thing, the only impact will be felt by an unsuspecting world that will be poorer and more environmentally polluted for your efforts. And for another thing, councils can (and do) issue fixed penalty fines if they catch you. Quite large ones, too.

The first stage will be that you'll find a label on your bin that explains why the binmen have refused it. Your only recourse at that stage will be to empty the bin and sift through the contents - the plastic, the plant matter, the bottles, the porridge and the dog turds. Lovely.

The next stage, if you do it again, will be the fine and a possible court summons. Are you sure you've thought this through?

BJ

They'll have to catch him first!

On the occasions I'm looking out of the window when my bins are being emptied, I note that the binmen appear to make a point of *not* looking into the bins they're emptying.

My guess is that, if they look and find anything in the wrong bin, they'd have to deal with it. That will slow the round down, which will lengthen their working day.

So, 1nvest is likely to get away with his protest for a while - but I guess that there are inspectors who accompany random rounds who will detect 1nvest's protest and apply the appropriate penalty. Has 1nvest thought of an appropriate protest in the event he is penalised for mixing his waste?

Watis

[doolally]

So, BnC is likely to get away with his protest for a while - but I guess that there are inspectors who accompany random rounds who will detect BnC's protest and apply the appropriate penalty. Has BnC thought of an appropriate protest in the event he is penalised for mixing his waste?

Watis

I'm not sure how you can confuse BnC with 1nvest!
But I am sure that 1nvest's "protest" will have less than zero effect on his problem
doolally

[Watis]

So, BnC is likely to get away with his protest for a while - but I guess that there are inspectors who accompany random rounds who will detect BnC's protest and apply the appropriate penalty. Has BnC thought of an appropriate protest in the event he is penalised for mixing his waste?

Watis

I'm not sure how you can confuse BnC with 1nvest!
But I am sure that 1nvest's "protest" will have less than zero effect on his problem
doolally

Thanks for pointing my mistake out, doolally - I've corrected my post now.

And apologies to BnC!

Watis

[chas49]

Moderator Message:
Can we not go too far off-topic. Parking tickets are on-topic for the "Cars, Driving, Motorbikes or any Transport" board. Waste & recycling isn't.

Thanks (chas49)

[GoSeigen]

I've been caught yet again driving around unfamiliar back streets, turned into a road at the wrong time where the sign indicating restricted times wasn't really visible until you had already turned into the road (and the sign/writing is rather small, easily missed when you're also navigating around busy roads). Another £65 when paid within 14 days, otherwise £130. Does very much feel like visitor entrapment. Fine when you're familiar with a area, a risk/penalty for others to bolster Council revenues. I also note the Greater London council tax element increase has also been increased by the maximum

I still remember driving southwards from Euston station where I had met a friend off the train. I intended to turn right onto the A40 but was faced with two signs: one saying no right turn and showing an alternative route involving going straight ahead and then round the block, the other warning of the congestion zone straight ahead. I decided to obey the "no right turn" and go around the block. A couple of days later there was a fat fine for not paying up for entering the congestion zone. It sucks, I feel your pain.

However I coughed up and didn't resort to any childish revenge strategy. I thought it was only migrants who were supposed to indulge in that sort of petty law-breaking anti-social nonsense with proper Brits being a model of rectitude??? Had I got that wrong?


GS

[Lootman]

I've been caught yet again driving around unfamiliar back streets, turned into a road at the wrong time where the sign indicating restricted times wasn't really visible until you had already turned into the road (and the sign/writing is rather small, easily missed when you're also navigating around busy roads).

I am curious what kind of road has time restrictions even for access, dropping off, picking up etc. I know that some roads ban through traffic, although they are not usually time-dependent rules.

[Dicky99]

I've been caught yet again driving around unfamiliar back streets, turned into a road at the wrong time where the sign indicating restricted times wasn't really visible until you had already turned into the road (and the sign/writing is rather small, easily missed when you're also navigating around busy roads). Another £65 when paid within 14 days, otherwise £130. Does very much feel like visitor entrapment. Fine when you're familiar with a area, a risk/penalty for others to bolster Council revenues. I also note the Greater London council tax element increase has also been increased by the maximum

So I've opted to protest, in the form of being rid of my multiple waste bins and have ordered a large general waste bin into which everything will go. Apparently if I'd ordered that next week it would have cost £15, whereas this week it remains free. Maybe I'll revert towards council waste savings if/when the council decides not to discriminate against those with only two eyes instead of three - one for the road, another for the speedometer, another telescopic vision eye that can see around corners and through overhanging trees.

Do you have dashcam footage that would support a challenge?

[bungeejumper]

Moderator Message:
Can we not go too far off-topic. Parking tickets are on-topic for the "Cars, Driving, Motorbikes or any Transport" board. Waste & recycling isn't.

Thanks (chas49)

But, but, but. The OP started it, sir!!! He did, sir!!! He did!!

I remember one situation in the delightful French medieval city of Troyes, where a street sign near the market directed you to the main car park, which was just to your right. The only problem with that was that it was on a one-way street, and getting to the signposted entrance would necessarily involve driving about 25 metres in the illegal direction. Including driving straight across a pedestrian traffic light, where they wouldn't be expecting you at all.

I was never quite sure whether this devious arrangement was (a) simply a properly gallic cock-up, which all the locals had the wisdom to ignore, or (b) a fiendish stratagem to extract hefty fines from bemused foreigners who didn't know the local ropes.

Me, I didn't chance it. Found a back street parking space instead and silently vowed vengeance on any faceless functionary who tried to fine this poor Brit. Five years later, the extradition papers have yet to arrive.

BJ

[1nvest]

Do you have dashcam footage that would support a challenge?

Can't be bothered contesting it, just viewed (and paid the penalty at the same time) the 'evidence' photos and videos that reveal one sign on the nearside, that is visible once you've turned into and entered the road, opposite side of the same road looks to also have a likely similar sign, but that is largely obscured by a tall side van, where both sign posts are not on the corner, but some feet into the road, not really visible from the adjoining road (maybe so if the van wasn't obscuring the far side sign). Looked up the street location on a map, don't recall seeing the signs at all, it is a busy pedestrian/car/cycle area, not a road where you could perhaps slam on your brakes and reverse back out again safely/easily if you did manage to see the sign and permitted days/times. Even on the evidence photos the permitted days/times aren't legible, too pixelated when the image is enlarged. The trees to the left of the visible sign can be seen in the evidence photos, however the camera vantage point is such that the sign looks clear from that central directly opposite of the road camera angle. Dashcam wasn't on, but if it were I suspect it wouldn't have captured the sign either, or at most a high peripheral corner glance. Very much appearing to be laid out as a penalty revenue trap.

Around a year ago I received a parking penalty for a restaurant parking area when their 'register your number plate' machine was off-line. The restaurant was paper recording all number plates but the (separate) parking area group obviously wasn't passed the data, or didn't bother transpose it into their system. When I contested the penalty that went on for months and concluded with a finger pointing "we'll let you off this time" type ending. Life is too short to bother with the agro of such matters as contesting penalties ... or sorting waste. Our bin collectors just rush around, one man first walks the road pulling bins into a common area about 5 minutes or so before the dustcart comes down the road and where its rare for the bins to be returned anywhere near your front driveway. The guidance/instruction is not to leave bins out on the pavement/street but at your own boundary line, after the bins have been emptied however they're spread out around the street pavement and you have to go hunting to find your own bin. On one occasion our bin was >100 yards or so down the road. The dustcart just lifts/tips each bin to empty the contents into the dustcart, and other than perhaps a casual glance I believe they don't rummage through the contents. For me, not having four bins and having to sort refuge is a plus. As the bins aren't lockable, anyone could drop anything into any of the bins, which I believe is a common practice in other places/countries where you pay for each bin that is collected/emptied (that also incites bags of rubbish being thrown into random front gardens).

[1nvest]

I remember one situation in the delightful French medieval city of Troyes

The French like to protest, as do others. Brits just tend to quietly accept whatever is dictated. IIRC one French town had newly installed parking meters removed after the machines were regularly being superglued.

[Lootman]

I remember one situation in the delightful French medieval city of Troyes

The French like to protest, as do others. Brits just tend to quietly accept whatever is dictated. IIRC one French town had newly installed parking meters removed after the machines were regularly being superglued.

Depends, I recall that Brits got all riled up during the poll tax fiasco, refusing to pay their council tax bills and all.

I think if councils keep trying to trick and trap drivers into fines and fees in a snide way then the people may decide that the social contract has been broken and engage in civil disobedience.

But I agree with Chas that this topic is fraught with distraction. Maybe it should be moved to Bitter Lemons, Legal Matters or CAN.

[Dicky99]

So I've opted to protest, in the form of ...

Submitting a FOI request for...

[bungeejumper]

I decided to obey the "no right turn" and go around the block. A couple of days later there was a fat fine for not paying up for entering the congestion zone. It sucks, I feel your pain.

However I coughed up and didn't resort to any childish revenge strategy.

My approach, too. I've only had about four such fixed penalties in my life, and two of those were unfair for different reasons. Sufficient cause for fifteen minutes' teeth-grinding, certainly, and I did that as well. Who wouldn't? But really life's too short for getting riled up about a few tenners, and I paid up as fast as possible because I needed to clear my head and get on with my work.

Besides, I thought, if I'd been wrongly fined on two occasions, well, perhaps that was Providence's own way of making up for the couple of times when I'd accidentally stopped on a box junction, etc, and not been snapped by the cameras? (Once for fifteen seconds in Bristol (it was the bus driver's fault), and another time because I simply hadn't noticed it.)

We're all human. Well, all right, maybe not traffic wardens.

BJ

[Arborbridge]

I decided to obey the "no right turn" and go around the block. A couple of days later there was a fat fine for not paying up for entering the congestion zone. It sucks, I feel your pain.

However I coughed up and didn't resort to any childish revenge strategy.

My approach, too. I've only had about four such fixed penalties in my life, and two of those were unfair for different reasons. Sufficient cause for fifteen minutes' teeth-grinding, certainly, and I did that as well. Who wouldn't? But really life's too short for getting riled up about a few tenners, and I paid up as fast as possible because I needed to clear my head and get on with my work.

Besides, I thought, if I'd been wrongly fined on two occasions, well, perhaps that was Providence's own way of making up for the couple of times when I'd accidentally stopped on a box junction, etc, and not been snapped by the cameras? (Once for fifteen seconds in Bristol (it was the bus driver's fault), and another time because I simply hadn't noticed it.)

We're all human. Well, all right, maybe not traffic wardens.

BJ

I tend to go along with the same thought - it is hardly ever worth the emotional effort. Pay up and get on with life, even if it was unfair in the first place. I might draw an exception at something which was clearly wrong, but one has to be careful in choosing the hill to die on!

My pet fear at the moment is ANPR systems in car parks, espescially the rare occasions when you drive in, don't like the charges, and drive out again in short order. There are many anecdotes of those events ending in tears.

Arb.

[bungeejumper]

My pet fear at the moment is ANPR systems in car parks, espescially the rare occasions when you drive in, don't like the charges, and drive out again in short order. There are many anecdotes of those events ending in tears.

I'm happy to be corrected, but I believe the code of practice for car park operators is that they have to allow time for these no-go situations? I've driven into a multi-storey car park and been unable to find a space anywhere, and I've had to hope that after 10-15 minutes my entrance card wouldn't try to put a charge on me as I made my exit. (It didn't.) Similarly at an NHS hospital, where the surveillance was by ANPR, and where I left after ten minutes without charge.

The time it got a bit dicey was when another multi-storey car park in Bristol was brought to a complete standstill by an accident on the lower decks, which meant that everybody in the car park had to wait 45 minutes longer than they might have expected. In my case, the extension of my "parking period" would have added about four quid to my exit bill, and I was all riled up and ready to get cross about it. As it happened, though, the car park operators had clearly been made aware of the problem, and all the exit barriers were up when I got there. Fair play.

The whole business of private car park charges and penalties is currently under review: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for ... r-evidence. From the ministerial foreword:

There are few of life’s daily bugbears that, irrespective of background or politics, can be as frustrating as parking.

From driving around in endless loops looking for a space to worrying if you’re going to be charged an arm and a leg for the privilege, private parking can feel like the wild west. Different rules in the same postcode, impenetrable terms and conditions that feel less like a service than a trap to catch people out. Machines that lead to fines for drivers for confusing an O with an 0.

We’re rightly moving, as a society, to greener forms of transport, but most people in the UK – 35 million – still rely on their car to get around. Unfair charges bite at the best of times, but especially so with current cost of living pressures.

They deserve better – and so, too, do our high streets and businesses which depend on good quality parking to generate custom and thrive. We’re acting to put this right by introducing a new private parking code of practice that will raise standards and put the brakes on rogue practices.

It can't happen too soon. Watch this space.

BJ