To start a new week we looked at a couple of stories related to motoring.
Now I guess this would annoy most people, but Laura Armstrong, 32, was left fuming after being handed a £100 charge for parking in her designated spot in an underground gated car park at her apartment block in Worcester.
It seems that the fine was issued after her parking permit slipped from the dashboard and fell out of view.
Not unnaturally Laura assumed that the fine would be overturned once she explained that she lived on the premises and had a legal right to park there.
But not a bit of it.
Parking Control Management Ltd – the company which manages the car park – has refused to back down, insisting that Laura pays up as the permit was not displayed at the time the vehicle was parked.
So then Laura contacted the firm who manage the apartment but they weren’t interested either.
Said Laura, “Apparently it doesn’t matter to them even if you can prove you have a legal right to park there – which just seems like madness. I was occupying the space which had been allocated to me and I wasn’t causing an obstruction or anything like that.”
“It’s like they are out to punish residents rather than look after our interests and protect genuine permit holders. It just isn’t right.”
It now appears that Laura is not alone and that other residents of the apartment have faced similar issues – one of them twice.
Nevertheless it seems there is no mention of a need for car parking permits in the lease agreement, and one has to wonder why there is even a need for the car park to be managed given that it is a gated residents car park accessible only by use of a door key fob.
Leaving Laura behind to argue her case we moved further afield.
Starting in the USA we heard about a driver who managed to wreck his newly purchased £565,000 classic supercar told police it happened because he didn’t know how to drive it.
Yes, incredibly 50-year old ROBERT J GUARINI of Boca Raton, Florida snapped up the 2006 Heritage Edition Ford GT at auction, but being unfamiliar with driving a manual car which was also incidentally fitted with very old worn out tyres, he promptly smashed it into a tree completely wrecking the front of the vehicle.
A somewhat costly mistake!
He claimed that he was only driving at 35MPH at the time of the accident, but he’s since had his licence suspended for driving an unregistered vehicle.
Meanwhile over in the Netherlands it’s been reported that a 4-year old boy took his mother’s car for a spin, crashing into 2 parked cars in the process.
Seems he pocketed the car keys after waking up when his father had gone to work.
A bystander found him wandering around next to the vehicle, bare foot and in his pyjamas but when asked if he knew how to drive the car, he opened it up with the keys, inserted them into the ignition, put his foot on the clutch and hit the gas.
Fortunately no one was injured in the incident and the boy was given a drink of hot chocolate at the police station.
Oops. Well better luck next time!
All being well I hope to return tomorrow,
Scott
