Dangerous Parking

I WAS STUNNED TO SEE A CAR PARKED  ON THE PAVEMENT.

Not only was the car parked completely on the pavement, but to get parked it had to negotiate the gap between two fences.  In addition to that, this is a corner — a busy one where school children have to cross the road in every direction.  Notice the ice and frost — a slip and slide hazard, not just for the vehicle, but for pedestrians who cannot use the railings. Finally, the car is a TAXI!  In other words, driven by a professional who ought to know the law, who ought to know better, and who should be more considerate than others  — not least of all for risking losing a livelihood.

Click on the picture to enlarge.

Crossing Poles

A WALK THROUGH SHAWLANDS IS ALWAYS AN EXCITING PROSPECT.

It is an assault course of dog fouled pavements, illogically parked cars, overgrown hedges, bollards and crazy things such as the lamppost shown in the picture — please click on the picture to enlarge.

There is a pole for the no-entry sign located exactly where a pedestrian needs to cross — right where the kerb dips at the corner.  This pedestrian could be a partially sighted person, wheelchair bound, a mother with a pram or perhaps an elderly person with either a Zimmer frame or one of those electrical wheelchairs.

How annoying and unsafe!  Do people not think things through anymore?  If there is no guide and handbook on how to do this, if there is no legislation or regulation, what about the people who actually dug the pavement up and erected this pole?

Things are getting worse when people cannot think about their work, but simply do a shoddy bit of work and forget all about it.

If you refer back to this picture, you might see that there is another daft pole on the opposite side — just shown on the right side of the picture. Good luck to everyone who wants to cross at this junction.

My 1st Traffic Jam Puzzle

MY FIRST TRAFFIC JAM PUZZLE.

That’s what it says on the box.

Yes, things are that bad, and getting worse it would seem. Is there a grand plan to prepare children for inevitable traffic jams in later adult life?

Is there a grand plan perhaps to sell children a series of traffic jam puzzles? This is MY FIRST traffic jam puzzle — and that suggests the possibility of a second, third and who-knows how many more.

On further consideration, it is possible that the puzzle is “why have we got traffic jams”?  How much fun would it be to consider all the options to transport and travel for the 21st century. Yes, what a fun toy!

I don’t know about you, but this – whatever it is — does not immediately strike me as an absolutely brilliant idea for a children’s toy or game.  Things are definitely getting worse when someone can successfully pitch their idea about a puzzle for children based on traffic congestion.

Looking again at the box, I see that it could be that the entire reason for the traffic jam could be the child driving the big green tractor.  How hilarious! The child can play at being responsible for road rage and disgruntled commuters for the FIRST time! My, oh my; what kind of monsters are we trying to create here?

Bollards

BOLLARDS ARE SOFTER THAN YOU THINK.

The council put bollards up to try to stop cars being parked in particular areas, but it is not working on account of the fact that bollards are made from cheap soft plastic rubbish!

The moral of the story is to drive slowly at the bollards to bend them out of your way, allowing you to park wherever you want.

Council tax money well spent!

Car Parking Twist

IN GLASGOW’S IRONICALLY NAMED PARK AREA, CARS ARE PARKED AT AN ANGLE TO THE PAVEMENT.

The entire enterprise seems to be to narrow a wide road to aggravate drivers and perhaps slow them down.

There can be no other explanation; if the cars were “normally” parked in a parallel fashion to the pavement, there would be just as many cars parked, but the road would be much wider for cars and vans driving past.

Consider the diagram above.  Fig 1 shows the current angled parking. Fig 2 shows normal parallel parking, and the top figure shows both combined.  Hopefully, this diagram shows that the cars take up the same length of kerb regardless of the angle of parking.  The only difference is how much car is sticking out into the road.

Not only does this restrict a perfectly wide road, but it creates a couple of new dangers: cars parking in like this often touch the very high kerbs at the offside bumper, and parked cars have to reverse into oncoming traffic to leave the parking space.

Each bay is a pay-and-display earner for the council.  It would make no financial difference whatsoever to change the angled bays back to normal parallel ones.  It would widen the road for vans, improve road safety and reduce bumper scrapes for car owners in icy conditions.

However, common sense does not prevail in councils, and so the people who have to suffer are the ordinary tax-payers.

No Parking Reason

THE SIGN IS PLAIN; IT STATES “NO PARKING” AND “24 HOUR ACCESS”.

The sign uses a nice clear font, black lettering on white, and a good size too — able to be read from the car — no need to park and get out to read this sign!

It contains all the relevant information — no threats of clamping, towing away or a fine.  It is quite to the point and succinct — until you spot the tiny yellow warning triangle at the top right corner.

Know, you do have to park, get out and go up to see what this is about.

How bizarre is that?  The warning triangle has a drawing of a running child, a trike and a ball along with a garage door that seems to be opening and closing at the same time.

As far as I am aware, this is not in the “Highway Code”, so someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to think up this sign and use it in this strange manner.

It may be that the sign maker had a sudden panic; what if non-English speakers wanted to park their car, the sign would not be understood!  This warning triangle seems like an after-thought. It is not a proper size to be seen from a short distance!

Oddly, there is a no-parking sign in the “Highway Code”, which begs the question — why didn’t they just use that instead?

Clearly, they wanted to provide reasons, using illustration.  However, this child and his toys do not really explain the requirement for 24 hour access!

Things are getting worse when we invent road signs that cannot be easily seen nor understood.

UFO Parking Bay

I SAW A VERY STRANGE THING IN THE CAR PARK OF THE ASDA SUPERMARKET IN GOVAN LAST NIGHT.

Normally (in my personal experience), supermarket car parks contain car parking bays and places for stacking up shopping carts.

Determining the one from the other is fairly straightforward; the bays for the carts have a trolley or two and rails at the sides to demarcate the region and to prevent damage to cars parked in the bays each side.

However, if you double left click on the image, you will see that this is a zone that is completely enclosed!  A trolley could not be wheeled in, and a car, pram or bike cannot be parked there — so this begs the question: what is this all about?

Things are getting worse when valuable parking space is wasted for no apparent reason. How bizarre! The only answer we can come up with is for UFOs.

Plague of Leaflets

TARGETING YOUR MARKET IS SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD FOR BUSINESS. However, evermore companies are choosing to use customers as targets.

I hate these leaflets, and I don’t understand why it is so popular.  A person puts a sales leaflet under parked car’s windscreen wipers in the hope that it will drum up business.

Please double left click on the images to enlarge

However, what actually happens is that it annoys the car owner –  they have to scrape the wet paper that has stuck to the glass. They cannot drive away and use their windscreen wipers until this job is done.

It is especially bad on an expensive car, and it can reveal to a thief, for example, how long the car has been parked there.

Thing are definitely getting worse!

Please double left click on the images to enlarge

Deeper Surface

I WAS PASSING PC WORLD ON ARGYLE STREET WHEN I NOTICED THAT THE CAR PARK WAS FENCED OFF.

Then I noticed a sign that stated:

“SORRY FOR ANY
INCONVENIENCE
CAUSED DURING
CAR PARK
RESURFACING WORK”.

That seemed fair enough.. that is until I glanced through the fence at the work itself.

Please double click on any picture to enlarge.

I was stunned to see how deep these excavations were — this was not a resurface, this was archaeology!

I may be cynical, but was this all really necessary?  It just seems a tad excessive.  Things are certainly getting worse when a car park’s surface is a metre and a half!

Speed Parking!

NO ONE LIKES SPEED BUMPS.

In an earlier post we explained why the council have used speed bumps (and things like extra traffic lights) to force drivers to use particular routes (such as the M77).

The Tantallon Road Traffic Calming Scheme (part of the M77 Corridor scheme) provided for speed humps because The Scottish Executive states “Road humps are the most effective traffic calming measure available for reducing speed. “

What can we say about a speed hump in a parking bay (double click on picture to enlarge).

Bizarre. Things are definitely getting worse when the council spend thousands of pounds of our council tax money on rubbish like this! I would dearly love to hear the official explanation of this silliness!