Friday, May 16, 2008

On this day

in 1983, London police began wheel clamping illegally parked vehicles.

It anecodtal but it strikes me that those who cmplain bitterly about being clamped are those who moan loudest about trafic congestion. It never seems to dawn on them that that bad parking ("just for a minute while I nip to the shops to get some fags") might be the cause of congestion.

4 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

There's nothing like motorists for sheer unbridled hypocrisy. It's the motorists who also complain that there are too many cars on the road. And who complain about other people parking in front of their houses. If it were up to me I would scrap all traffic laws (and turn off the traffic lights etc) except that pedestrians always have the right of way and just let everybody get on with it.

From the point of view of a pedestrian, the more cars the better, as congestion and lousy parking slows traffic down and makes it easier to cross the road.

Anonymous said...

It's been mooted and favourably commented on several times:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533248/Is-this-the-end-of-the-road-for-traffic-lights.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/29/guardiancolumnists

I'm not sure I agree with Professor Adams (Grauniad article) about crash helmets (I wouldn't give up mine since falling off a motorbike at any speed can be lethal; at 90 it won't matter whether I'm wearing one or not in rather the same way that it wouldn't make any difference if I was wearing a seatbelt in a car collision at the same speed) but I do recall Ken HS when I worked there years ago as a cacophony of ambulance two-tones as yet another cyclist / pedestrian / idiot driver got carted off to hospital.

Anonymous said...

Can you imagine a world with no yellow lines in which all are free to park where they want at any time. I can because it was like this when I was a kid, and 95%+ of motorists then parked sensibly. All we needed was a law something like, "Anyone causing an obstruction would have their car clamped and then taken to the crusher.
Pretty soon, 100% would have been parking sensibly, and all that yellow paint could have been saved.

Simon Fawthrop said...

John,
The problem now is the number of cars on the roads, especialy in this area. I really enjpoy going back to North Yorkshire where it is possible to get a move on and there is even room to safely overtake when you get behind a slow vehicle.