Double yellow peril for unwary parkers

NOT a lot of people know this.

But if you live alongside a road with double yellow lines, and you have a driveway that crosses the verge or the pavement to your front gate, you are not allowed to stop on the driveway. Not even for ten minutes.

If you do, you are likely to get not one, but THREE traffic wardens arriving at once to issue you a ticket.

It happened to a friend of mine just recently on the Downton road.

With another vehicle already parked in the front garden when she arrived, she’d pulled in temporarily, facing her gate, in the gap where her drive crossed the verge, taking care not to block the pavement. The chief thing on her mind was keeping her three-year-old granddaughter safe because it's a busy road.

She had no idea, and I didn’t either, that double yellow ‘no parking’ rules applied to driveways and pavements right up to the front boundary of a house.

She found out the hard way, with a fine that Wiltshire Council has refused to reconsider and if she doesn’t pay up now, it’ll double.

Why three wardens, by the way?

Safety in numbers, apparently. Because some people have spat at them.

And of course people shouldn’t spit at them. But neither is there any need for them to go around targeting well-meaning, otherwise law-abiding citizens like my mate who aren’t really causing any problems.

I know the council’s short of cash, to put it mildly. But alienating harmless members of the taxpaying public isn’t going to win it any sympathy.