Notting Hill Diary

“And another thing!” Mr Angry of W11

OK this isn’t strictly a Notting Hill thing, but just next door in Hammersmith & Fulham around Shepherd’s Bush the parking restrictions were changed over night to include, among other things, no parking on Sundays. That alone catches a lot of people out, but it’s far from the biggest problem.

That award goes to a combination of the complicated rules themselves and the way the sign is worded. It starts off by appearing to suggest one thing, then says another by the time you’ve read the bottom, which is in a different section. That alone would be enough, but yet another problem is that when you’re driving past it’s dangerous to have to read the sign in the first place and the longer it takes to read and more difficult it is to comprehend the more dangerous it is. Most people, sensibly, try to take in the information as quickly as possible.

That leads them to pay attention to the bit it’s easy to see, assume it’s OK to park for free between 2pm and 4pm or after 6:30pm and get a ticket. On any given Sunday it’s now completely normal to see entire streets full of parked cars being given tickets during the afternoon. That’s nothing less than an almost wilful and definitely knowing attempt to catch drivers out.

After all if the idea was simply to prevent people from parking there at the wrong times they’d display the information more clearly and/or simplify it to start with.