In a world where stooping for even a couple of minutes in the wrong place can earn you a parking ticket, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to beat the system, even if it was only once?
Well this bad weather we are having might just be you’re opportunity, according to Safiya Hussain a legal consultant at NoParkingFine Ltd. The consultant, stated that ‘It is perhaps unbeknown to both the public and parking wardens; but following traffic laws, any parking fine that is issued on a road where the compulsory road markings have been covered by snow and thus not clearly visible, is not likely to be legally valid, even if there are visible signs nearby’. Parking wardens should not be issuing fines in these areas. It is wholly unfair and drivers who park innocently should not pay but rather appeal.
Now, don’t take my word for this, I am only telling you what I have read, but I have to say, it sounds fairly plausible that this could be the case, but despite that, I don’t think I would deliberately try it out (as they say), but I might just try and use the snow as an excuse, were I unfortunate enough to end up with a ticket in the snowy conditions.
Rumours abound about Parking Wardens, desperate to issue tickets, are even scraping the snow away with their boot in order to uncover the road markings so that they can then take a photograph to prove that the driver had parked in the restricted area. Even worse, it’s said some wardens wait for the snow and ice to melt during the night, so they can catch the driver out in the morning, whilst they are still in bed. It’s been reported that some wardens have issued parking tickets for drivers failing to display either parking permits or a disabled badge when they have simply been covered by snow on the windscreen.
Whilst we don’t mean to frighten you it seems that some of these underhand methods, despite lacking integrity, do work for the parking wardens and if you don’t want to get caught out, you should take special care, when you park anywhere.
The sensible advice is that if, during these snowy conditions you are a little uncertain, take a couple of pictures with your mobile phone and make sure you highlight the fact that the conditions did obscure any road markings and the same goes for any permits, or disabled badges that were on your screen, but hidden, then write to the issuing authority and complain
Parking is big business; don’t ever forget that and its got to be the easiest £60+ you could ever make, just by sticking a ticket on a cars windscreen. We would all like to believe that parking restrictions are there for good and valid reasons, but we know locally, areas that for years had double yellow lines (I assume for the same good and valid reasons) are no longer double yellow lines since it became permissible to bang up a parking ticket machine and charge us for the privilege of stopping there.
