It’s never nice to come back to your vehicle to discover a sinister yellow envelope folded under your windshield wipers. That’s why when it comes to parking, I’m the best in two shoes.
Throughout my two decades of driving, I have tried to follow the rules to the letter. Never park too close to corners, always avoid double yellow lines, and stay off dropped curbs, even if I’m just running for a few minutes.
And because I’m so strict about the rules, I’ve hardly ever gotten a parking ticket before. All of that changed this weekend.
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I had parked my vehicle in Bristol Council’s free St. George car park. This location has bays, but there are also spaces to leave your vehicle in other unmarked locations that do not block people.
All the bays were full, so I found a spot that wouldn’t obstruct anyone else. There were no road markings or signs saying ‘please park in bays’ so I had no idea I was breaking any rules.
Two hours later I came back to find the plastic ticket stuck in my windshield wipers and I really thought it was a friend pulling a prank on me.
But then I unfolded the ticket and looked at all the information and realized there’s a little known rule that you have to park in the parking bays even if that’s not posted anywhere nearby.
After a lot of googling, I found out that this was actually a pitfall that many people had accidentally fallen into. Most of my friends also didn’t realize that parking lots weren’t the safe spaces we always thought they were. Only my dad said ‘of course you can only park in bays if the parking lot has marked bays’.
I am currently in the process of appealing the ticket, but my chances of success do not look promising.
UNTIL NEXT TIME;