Risk assessment relating to removing school crossing patrols

10 Dec

Following suggestions that all of the 72 school crossing patrols in Suffolk may be axed to save £230K per year I have just submitted a Freedom of Information request to the County Council requesting the sort of information that will be required assess the risk associated with removing the school crossing patrols at each of these locations. Look East highlighted the fact that this amount of money was almost exactly as the annual  salary of the chief executive at the council. Incidentally, a total of four pedestrian have been killed in the last 10 years close to one of the crossing patrols under review close to where I live.

Elf and safety is an amazing thing. A few years ago a profusion of ‘cyclist dismount’ signs were installed at great expense in Ravenswood near Ipswich along a new cycle path which no one in their right mind would follow. Now I get the impression that parents will be left to fend for themselves crossing fast 30 mph roads when the chance of death is about 50% for a pedestrian  hit by a car at that speed. If the same logic was used for car drivers as it is in Ravenswood for cyclists then car drivers would be expected to get out and push their vehicles along section of road where pedestrians were likely to cross the road! You can also get the context for the signage from Google Streetview.

Dismount again and again and again

Follow the money

10 Dec

During the initial investigation of the Watergate scandal the ‘deep throat’ told reporters at the Washington Post to ‘follow the money’. It is certainly interesting to follow the money from parking fines.

Fines given out by the police appear to go into general Treasury funds, ie the money is treated just like most other taxation. Given that police funding is being cut and that for every police officer dealing with parking offenses there is one less police officer dealing with other crimes I suggest that the level of enforcement we will see will decrease over time as they concentrate on more urgent issues.

Fines handed out by the councils using civil enforcement powers on the other hand are retained by the council. In most councils this is ring-fenced and can only be used for enforcement purposes with any surplus available for highway or environmental schemes. Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (Section 55) The AA do say that it would be a breech of the Secretary of State’s guidelines if a council viewed civil parking enforcement as a way of raising revenue, however others have argued that the level of fines should be raised to ensure that fines need to be higher to act as a sufficient deterrent in areas where official parking charges are high.

A total of 328m was paid out by motorists in parking fines in 2008-2009 which works out at £6.14 per head. Westminster Council raised a whopping £42m. If the number of registered vehicles in the UK continues its relentless climb the temptation to park illegally will only increase and fine incomes will probably also climb.

What this means is that as long as the cost of collection is lower than the amount of income raise then there should be no risk of parking enforcement for civil offenses (such as yellow lines) falling due to reduced council revenue. As such I suggest that we press councils on enforcement for which they are responsible, for example in Arras Square that I reported on a few days ago. Check the map in The Law section to see if your areas has opted for civil enforcement.

DHL’s ‘cost-effective delivery solutions’

8 Dec

DHL claims to offer ‘rapid, reliable and cost-effective delivery solutions’. Certainly no additional costs were incurred today when delivering to a house opposite a primary school at pick-up time. The unmarked car was parked diagonally across a raised school crossing in a ‘school zone’ on a single yellow line within its active period right across the pavement. The driver was wearing a DHL tabard and as is usually the case explained that ‘he had only been there a few minutes’. He was however relaxed and wasn’t aggressive at all which makes a nice change.

An unmarked car delivering for DHL

The driver was wearing a DHL tabard

I guess that it is more cost effective to park across the pavement than to park a little way down the street and walk. As always an email is winging its way to their marketing department and I will provide an update in due course.

The same crossing takes poll position in our Rogues’ gallery where a Jaguar and a Mercedes shared it nose to nose, very sweet! I also commented on the way that even when there isn’t a car completely blocking the pavement that the 88% of the people who walk to the school have only 18% of the space. Also that the school crossing patrol at the end of the street is likely to be lost when the person doing it retires in the spring. So much for the ‘war on the motorist!‘.

It has been suggested – see comments – that they get their inspiration for this dynamic and never-say-never approach to ‘on-time’ delivery from Lieutenant Frank Drebin in Police Squad, played by the recently departed Leslie Nielsen.

Update

We are in communication and DHL are puzzled. Their staff do not used unmarked cars, however they did sell their local delivery business to HomeLink recently and that company was evidently allowed to use DHL branding for a period of time which is not up yet. They are checking with HomeLink.

After making two phone calls to DHL where they promised to look into the issue I have heard nothing. Not very impressive really. I will keep my eyes open for the next occurrence.

Tags: , ,

No vehicles at any time. Well… except for these vehicles

8 Dec

The signage at the bottom of St Stephens Lane leading to Arras Sq in Ipswich could not be clearer. ‘No vehicles at any time except for loading’

I have been keeping an eye on the place for a few months because there seems to be no enforcement and I noticed that many of the same cars parked there every day all day. Yesterday I was there in mid morning when all the usual cars were joined by people actually delivering which were causing a serious problem:

Almost impassable

Arras Sq 2

Arras Sq 3

Arras Sq 5

Some of the vehicles are genuinely ‘loading/unloading’ however many are not. One owner who came out of his shop and asked me why I had taken a photo of his car was good enough to say that he would support me in clearing the square of his and other people’s cars so that ‘they could have a market of something’. He explained that other shop keepers had told him it was fine to park there!

Incidentally the square is named in memory of the 150,000 British soldiers who died near Arras in WW1 including men from four Suffolk battalions. At one time 25,000 soliders were billeted right under the noses of the Germans in caves under the city virtually under the German lines. The caves opened the public in 2008 and are well worth visiting.

Just to show that this isn’t a one-off. Here is the same red car using the same spot back in March 2010. And… if it you look carefully it was also there when the Google streetview car passed the end of the street!

The same car using the same spot nine months ago in March 2010

Nice bench, shame that no one can use it.

Nice bench, shame about the car

Ironically, one of the worst offenders, was the manager at ‘Black Sheep’ which has subsequently closed I am please to say. I have some video of hundreds of people having to negotiate her car one day when she parked it in an even worse position. It is amazing that owners of shops put their own convenience about that of their customers.

A black sheep?

As always I will press my local authority to do something about this.

Update

After a week without any response I sent a reminder email and got this reponse by return: “Thank you for your email. The position in Arras Square is very complex with several owners and leases involved and only part of the area being highway. I have passed your enquiry to my colleague [name removed] who will answer you as soon as he is able to do so”. The ‘as soon as he is able to’ bit doesn’t sound too promising reallly.

Mini police officers penalise parents

6 Dec

A nice post by Living Streets.

“In partnership with Bradford’s road safety team and the West Yorkshire Police, primary school pupils donned police uniforms and handed out parking tickets to parents, in a successfully ‘lighthearted’ bid to highlight road safety. The event intended to warn parents and their children of the dangers of the ‘school drop’ and prevent daily offences such as pavement parking, using mobile phones whilst driving and stopping/dropping off in non-designated zones”.

I love the way this reworks the power balance between the children, who tend to suffer more than others from such behaviour and the minority of adults who are trying to get away with it. Do also check out my post about Junior Speed Watch which gets kids to bring speeding adults to task. What is powerful about this is how the authorities are working directly with the young people.

See the original ‘mini police officers’ article here:
‘Just the ticket for parents’

Clearing snow from pavements

30 Nov

In Minneapolis residents residents are reminded by the local authority to clear the snow on the pavement (sidewalk). The authority’s website says politely that ‘Keeping our sidewalks free of ice and snow is the neighbourly thing to do’. It then goes on to make it clear that residents that the law “requires that property owners clear sidewalks after the end of a snowfall within 24 hours for houses and duplexes, Four daytime hours for apartment and commercial buildings (daytime hours begin at 8am)”.

In the UK the Telegraph rather unhelpfully reported in January 2010 that “Health and safety experts warn: don’t clear icy pavements, you could get sued”. The government has now made it clear that you can clear snow with a proviso that you should avoid making the pavement more dangerous. It then says: “don’t be put off clearing paths because you’re afraid someone will get injured… Remember, people walking on snow and ice have responsibility to be careful themselves. Follow the advice below to make sure you clear the pathway safely and effectively.”

David Howarth who is a former MP for Cambridge and a former lecturer in Law at Cambridge University goes further. He says “furthermore, in the very unlikely case where the intervention does make the situation more risky, it is not enough to show that the passer-by fell over. The passer-by would have to show that he would not have fallen over anyway, or would not have injured himself just as badly in some other way – something that is very hard to do”.

He goes on the say “Finally, even if the risk was made worse and the injury was caused specifically by the enhancement of the risk that the householder was responsible for, there is still no liability unless the passer-by can prove that the householder acted in an unreasonable way. Since most people think, as you and I do, that it is perfectly reasonable to clear the snow from the pavement outside one’s house, even if the case had not been thrown out previously, it would fail on this point.” Finally that “There is no known case of anyone in this country ever being sued successfully in these circumstances“.

He signs off saying “There is no need for a change in the law. What we need instead is a change in the quality of the people who write and edit newspapers“!

So, get clearing!

Welcome to another 52,000 vehicles!

29 Nov

By the end of 2009 there were 52,000 more vehicles on GB roads than at the end of 2008 and this is despite a big down-turn in car sales, and government money in a scrappage scheme to encourage sales until the end of March 2010. The scrappage scheme did at least take one old car of the road for each qualifying new car.

Between 1997 and the end of 2009 (roughly the period Labour’s term of office) the number of cars on GB roads increased by over 7 million or 27%! Clearly the purchasers of these additional vehicles plan to leave them somewhere when they are not in use. This may be outside some new house on a shiny new driveway or somewhere else out of the way however I am sure many front gardens were dug up with associated dropped kerbs, creating their own problems for pedestrians. Many will of course have been squeezed onto the highway where-ever possible, across pavements, on verges etc etc. Here is a graph showing the relentless increase in vehicle numbers in Great Britain since 1950.

GB vehicle stock 1950-2009

And here is the graph showing just the registrations and scrappages each year for 1960 onwards. The bumps and lumps in the curve generally fit with the state of the economy.

GB vehicle registrations and scrappages

The lack of sales and relatively low increase in the vehicle stock is in general treated as a problem by government because of the lack of ‘growth’ which is in their view always a good thing. In human beings uncontrolled growth is known to a huge problem (we call it cancer!) and if the pet hamster we had as a kid hadn’t stopped growing at the right moment then results would have been disastrous as pointing out in this wonderful little animation.

There are however also encouraging signs that we may be approaching a peak in vehicle numbers and that they could drop significantly in the coming years. Car clubs are growing fast, cycling is growing fast, rail travel is growing fast and mileage in cars per head of population has actually been on its way down for some time now. In addition the iPhone, blackberry and other smart phones can only be used when someone else is driving. Personally I think it is the mobile communications devices that will encourage most people out of their cars so that they can work while traveling. That is the subject for one of more later post though!

motorists – 2nd class citizens?!

27 Nov

Mr Herron from Sunderland has spent more than £100,000 of his own money campaigning to improve the status of motorists who he said had been treated as “second-class citizens” but didn’t convince the judge I am pleased to say.

He lost a court case where he claimed that the controlled parking zone in Sunderland city centre were too large and confusing for drivers and wanted the 39 penalty charge notices issued against him for parking on single yellow lines within the zone to be ruled unenforceable! 39 times? The markings must be very confusing or is this another case of willful ignorance? He also complained about “petty little bureaucrats”, “stealth taxes” and said he only wanted “fair enforcement” etc etc. He said that prohibitions in a controlled parking zone should only be enforced if every part of every road within the zone had been marked with either parking places, a single or double yellow lines.

Commenting on the Heron case, Paul Watters, head of transport policy at the AA said: “There is a need for greater clarity in the implementation of parking restrictions by councils across the country”. Paul Watters also recently suggested that every single dropped kerb should be marked with white paint to warn motorists not to park across them! For course the AA recently complained that fines for illegal parking should only cover the associated enforcement costs. Are the AA suggesting that fines should be massively increased to cover the cost of marking every dropped kerb and controlled parking zone in the country or is he expecting that cost to be also share out between motorists who already know the law and by non-motorists! I think I know the answer already.

Talking about democracy and fairness. I recently posted about how 88% of the ‘traffic’, ie the pedestrians, dropping kids of at a local primary school where on foot but only got 18% of the highway to use. Now that is 2nd class in by my recogning.

Highway robbery?

25 Nov

Local Authorities have written to the Department for Transport asking for the maximum fine for illegal parking to be raised from £70 to £120 (still subject to an early payment 50% discount) giving a maximum cost of £60 for someone who pays quickly. This request is for maximum fines outside London to be able to be as high as in London. While researching this just now I came across a long rant about the injustice of it all in the Independent in 2006 titled Highway Robbery.

The AA say that it was a ‘clear breach’ of the government’s rules because “The guidelines state that local authorities should not view civil parking enforcement as a way of raising revenue”.

Lets examine that claim.

Firstly, surely the purpose of a penalty for breaking the law should be sufficient to encourage compliance? If parking legally costs £20+ (as it does in Cambridge and some other places) then the fine needs to be considerably higher than that should it not?

Secondly. What is the cost of illegal parking? The total national fines were £330m last year. What does the AA think that should cover? Just the salaries of the parking wardens and police? What about the legislation regarding the creation of yellow lines (£1,500 a time), installation of all the bollard sand fences needed to physically stop drivers parking on the pavement, the costs of repair cracked pavements and verges turned to mud as in the following picture.

Ruined verge

Personally, I think that the AA keeping are keeping their blinkers well and truly fixed on the narrow enforcement costs. Is it not the motorists who are doing the ‘highway robbery’ by claiming all of the highway and then taking a chunk of the pavement as well. In addition they then use every trick in the book to make enforcement difficult?

People may be interested in seeing the fuss and denial over the years about speed cameras which raise £110m per year all of which was used for road safety work until this year when the new government ‘raided’ 40% of it. Check out the Wikipedia articles on UK speed limits and UK speed limit enforcement but if you really want to see it ‘warts and all’ then look at the associated talk pages and history. The encouraging thing is that the RAC Foundation and the AA are now supporting speed cameras.

I will take a look into what the costs are and do a post about it soon. It was, of course, only because the parking enforcement was so broken in the first place that I started this blog.

Willful ignorance?

25 Nov

I passed a UK Mail delivery van parked on the zig-zag lines by a pedestrian crossing yesterday. I asked him politely to move and he responded saying he was allowed to stay there for 5 minutes. wrong! When I challenged him I got a tirade of abuse including words beginning with F and P together with the ‘get a real job’ and ‘people like you need a smack in the gob’ etc. Not exactly what on expects from postman pat! Update… see bottom of post for an impressive, prompt and helpful response from UK Mail to this particular incident.

Zig zag man

It is, of course, a criminal offense to even stop on the zig-zag lines. To quote: “The only time in which it could be permitted to stop on zigzag lines is in the case of an emergency or where the reason that the vehicle came to a halt was beyond the driver’s control”. Rule 240 of the highway code says You MUST NOT stop or park on …”a pedestrian crossing, including the area marked by the zig-zag lines”. The actual legislation is in ‘The Zebra, Pelican and Puffin Pedestrian Crossings Regulations and General Directions 1997’ (Section 18). The markings are defined in schedule 4.

I notice that their website implies that these drivers are self employed and that the job is ‘fast-paced, exciting, challenging – and lucrative.’ ‘An average day will see me make in excess of 100 deliveries and 20 plus collections.’ and ‘it requires energy, adrenaline and vitality in bundles.’ They do also say that ‘UK Mail invests a lot of time and effort in training and supporting its staff’ however that doesn’t seem to include training about the Highway Code. It is a public company which operates 3,500 vehicle from 50 sites and made £17m profit last year. It says that it is committed to pushing the boundaries of the postal and express delivery markets. Ummm, does that include parking?

The choice of these huge vehicles is of course a business decision as is the number of deliveries required in a day as is the decision to incentivise the drivers and celebrate speed on their website. The drivers lack of knowledge of the law seems to fall into the category of ‘willful ignorance‘ which is a very common condition amongst poor parkers! Of course if the drivers are really expected to do 120 deliveries/collections in a day (lets assume a long 10 hours) then that is one every 5 minutes which doesn’t give much time to find a parking spot each time in such a large vehicle when they also have traffic to deal with and finding the person to sign for the package.

This is the third time in a few weeks that we have experienced an aggressive response to poor parking choices by people driving professional vehicles who have all said that they are parking legally. Personally I feel it is an issue we will see time and time again until these companies feel financial and brand pain. As usual I will contact the company and see what they say.

Update – success!
Within 1 hour of emailing the head office I have received both an email and a phone call from the local UK Mail manager and he is taking it seriously. Very impressive! To quote from his email (with him permisssion). I hope that the driver will also be taking this important message on board.

“Here at Ipswich we pride ourselves on our customer service and try to
maintain very high standards in both performance and customer service.
However when these standards slip I need to take action quickly and through
your feedback this will allow me to do so.

“The individual will be brought to task, and will not be driving until after
his interview Friday, please take my assurances that If after interview he
retains his job he will not be repeating his actions again

“Please feel free to contact me if you or your organisation ever note
anything that would be deemed as unacceptable again. We are not above the law and however “pressurised” it appears my people are I do not accept such actions.

Tags: , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →