Watch out, there’s a Gateshead traffic warden about
By Paul Smith • Oct 13th, 2008 • Category: news
Do Gateshead council traffic wardens have targets to meet when it comes to slapping fines on windscreens? Are they paid-per-car? Is there any sort of incentive beyond pride in their work? No?
Then why did one newcastlecentric reader catch two wardens employing rather underhanded tactics outside a Gateshead school last week?
In the reader’s own words:
“I arrived with my child at Kells Lane school just before 5 to 9, which is when the bell rings. Two traffic wardens were stood away from the gates on Wilsons Lane.
“Anybody who has been down that street recently knows it’s a mess; new houses are being built opposite the school, so one half of the road is closed. It’s a nightmare to park and drop children off.
“I was one of the first out of the school gates, and the wardens weren’t standing around anymore - they’d begun photographing cars and taking details. Instead of warning parents before dropping their kids off two or three minutes before, the wardens had waited til they’d gone through the school gates and were out of sight.”
So Gateshead wardens are setting their alarm clock a little earlier, to deliberately target streets where parents have little choice but to park on yellow lines for no more than a moment or two. You have been warned.
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Paul Smith is the editor of newcastlecentric.com. He's quite a tall chap.
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Parents have lots of choices. I know this from the primary school my kids go to. However, 99 percent of parents who could park three minutes from school and walk the rest of the way - avoiding illegal parking - choose not to do so.
Yellow lines are there for a reason: it’s to keep traffic moving otherwise anarchy is the result. Oh-but-I-was-only-away-from-the-car-for-a-minute-so-parked-illegally actions block the road, leading to danger for kids, and it can also cause congestion ripples.
Traffic stupidity is so bad - and so dangerous - at our school that the police have to attend sometimes. There is no ‘right’ to park outside school gates because you have a child at that school. Such selfish, unthinking attitudes need to be changed, and if traffic wardens doing their job, is the way to get the message across to these Gateshead parents, that’s a positive, not a negative.
Surely in this instance, you can achieve a positive result by warning people off the yellow lines before they park up, rather than sneak about and do the deed when they’re not looking.
I’d absolutely agree there are plenty of lazy parents about who don’t help themselves in cases like this, but traffic wardens who deliberately wait to issue fines, as appears to be the case here (and this is only the reader’s opinion) aren’t doing anybody a favour, including themselves.
In my experience, no amount of warnings actually work. A juicy fine is often the only way to get through to people.
Sadly, sticks seem to work a lot better than carrots.