Dressed In A Little Brief Authority

[poliphilo]

We parked outside the dentist's yesterday afternoon- on double yellow lines. We had our disabled parking permit properly displayed in the front window and were fairly sure this trumped the yellow lines, but just to be absolutely certain we asked the traffic warden who was standing there for his opinion. He burbled something that seemed tantamount to giving us permission. Twenty minutes later we left the dentist's to find we'd been ticketed.

Surely the job of a traffic warden is to stop people parking in prohibited areas, not to lure them into breaking the rules so punishment can be administered? What is it about dressing a person in uniform that turns them into an enemy of the human race?

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Annoyingly often, the job of the traffic warden is to meet or exceed a quota of parking tickets issued during the day.

The user-icon I'm using on this post is of a ticket that was stuck to my car windscreen a few years back, telling me that I was going to have to pay a lot of money for parking in a residents parking bay without a permit.

It was stuck next to the residents permit. Within about 2 inches of it.

When I wrote and pointed this out to the council, they, after much deliberation, announced that they were choosing not to proceed with the prosecution at this time.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They do say that Councils regard parking controls as an easy way of raising money.

I don't really object to that- so long as the wardens aren't being pressured into meeting targets- and the system is policed fairly and sensibly.