Pregnant Driver fined for using parent and child parking space

[lynniep]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1193927/Heavily-pregnant-driver-fined-parking-parent-child-s pace--given-birth-yet.html

Just interested to know mn opinions. I think this might be a feisty thread!

Personally, I dont think she had a right to use that space and the fine should be witheld.

Whilst I think it would have been a decent thing to do to let her off as she's clearly close to her due date, (and I suspect a female attendant with children may well have been more understanding and done so - I think I would have ) I think its unfair to suggest the warden was not being reasonable as they were adhering to the law in this particular situation.

I understand its difficult to get out of a car when you're pregant (I almost got wedged myself today in a normal spot when some noggin parked to close to the driver side - I had to squeeze my bump through the gap - poor baby) and you really could do with more room than a normal space allows, however its even more difficult to try to get a child out of its car seat (or in some cases, get the car seat out with child in it) and these spaces are for this purpose only. There are never enough of them.

Opinions pls

yes I used P&T spaces when heavily pg and think the fine is absurd

no I don't think someone with a 12 yo should still use them

nor do I think they should be used by those who park, leave the kids in the car with another adult and pop in on their own

BUT
surely the real common sense solution to all this is to have a wider parking space as standard. with larger cars and dare I say, larger people than even 10 years ago, it would solve all the problems.

kat -looking in the car would not help you know the drivers situation if the baby was in the car seat in/above a shopping trolley at the time!!

kat -looking in the car would not help you know the drivers situation if the baby was in the car seat in/above a shopping trolley at the time!!

ooooops!

Wider parking spaces as standard mean fewer parking spaces though, it's hard enough trying to find parking as it is so that's not the answer.

I haven't read the link, but this is utterly ridiculous. For one thing, how can you prove that a person used a P&C parking place 'illegally'? The presence or absence of a carseat or child doesn't confirm anything. What if she had parked in one, loaded the Group 0 carseat into the buggy and walked off, eventually handing the buggy and baby over to Daddy who took her swiming or some such thing? I've done that. Or if someone parks in a P&C space with a carseat but no child either coming or going?

But to fine a heavily pg mum for parking in a P&C place even without an external child? My flabber is well and truely gasted. I always parked in P&C spaces once my bump had got very big. At the end of my last pregnancy I had to ask strangers to move my car for me, after someone else had come and parked in the next space. They were not unreasonably close - I was just too big to get into the gap! That's what P&C places are for: parents who need the extra width to manoeuver the child - it doesn't matter whether the child is internal or external.

FFS the world has gone mad. she has spd for gods sake too. totally justified for parking there and the parking company should be well and truely ashamed of themselves if they uphld the fine.

Well Cherry the only alternative is either for people to buy really narrow cars or catch the bus isn't ti? That opr concreete over the country anyway.

Because disblaed people need P&T parking, and others of us do benefit.

I rarely get to use it as there is never enough but being able to is important: today I won't go to the supermarket even though I need a few bits becauie DH is not ehre and I have the boys, trying to shop with a buggy and two autistic kids is bad enough but the sscary part is the carpark and we don't qualif for disabled so we rely on P&T

The aprkng at the local centre is free which is yay for us but when I calculated the cost of a bus (for DH and I £5) over a trip by car (£3 petrol) the benefitr was obvious; in the other direction it's the same cost with a £8 parking charge........ so whereas I woudlnt try it with the boys without an adult (and then it would be sill costly) I might be tempted alone or just dh / ds1

Oh and SPD hurts, people with SPD should be assesed for a blue badge by a GP but in many areas Councils have changed entitlement so very few can qualify

Ooh my fave topic P&C parking spaces.

IMHO pregnant women, disabled badge holders and those with young children in car seats should be eligible to use these spaces.
The following should not:
Parents of teenagers who park there
Parents who park there with kids but only one parent gets out
Fat lazy bastards who could clearly use the exercise but cant stand the walk from further down the car park
Men with small penises in flash cars
Old people who dont have a disabled badge but think that they can park there anyway because theyre old

Isn't the pushchair in the sign a hint that it means small children? So it is completely unreasonable to park in those spaces with a 12yo who is not disabled in any way.

Jobsworth Hat of the Year should go to this parking attendant - how ridiculous! Poor woman. I know when I was 41+ weeks pg I felt like parking in the P&C space but didn't.

And I agree that a skintight bump of enormous proportions does NOT squeeze through small gaps in the same way that a big non-pg blubberbelly could.

I got stuck between the house and DHs car parked outside when PG with ds4

can confirm that it does not squash well

The more rules one has the less we learn to think sensibly for ourselves. This story is evidence of a total lack of prgamatism brought about by over adherence to rules.

I suspect, though I have not clicked on the link, I could also diagnose here a case of misogynistic support for man with the fining ability and the sneering lack of regard for woman with the bump - shame on her for daring to be up duffed and not locked away in embrrassment at her physical ineptitude for her period of confinement.

Hi thumb - baby not here yet but trying. I had the Tens on last night and was convinced I was in labour most of the night. Will see what this evening brings..!

Would be a bit early though, still have a couple of weeks to go.

How are you?

That was in Exeter that was. [slightly embarrassed local interest emoticon] And according to the Express and Echo yesterday, she had the baby two days later. In the E&E picture she did look huge, and most parking spaces are stupidly close together in Exeter, so I can sort of see her point. Parking is hardly restricted here though. And the blokey who runs the Summerland Gate car park would definitely have let her park in parent and child spaces.

not too bad, stressed to the eyeballs cos of moving to Australia but we'll get there in the end! House has 90% gone already so we are camping here but with enough stuff for comfort.

I was convinced I was going into labour one night at about 40+3 - all lies! had to be induced at 42weeks but never mind. I know you've done it all before so you know the ropes! Hope it goes well when it goes!

I was told by our local tesco and sainsbury's that I was allowed to use the spaces whilst pregnant.

Oh, and the firm that runs the parking in Exeter are a bunch of bastard sharks, who presumably work on commission and are only too quick to be ticket-happy. They put up misleading signs about the car parks they control and are generally running very close to the edge of the law at the best of times. She would have been way better off parking off in one of the NCP parks.

What a plonker, still I think they now have a quoter to reach linked to pay or something so someone was telling me the other day that works for parking.

I get really pissed off at the parents who park at the school gates, another child was almost hit last week, and it is always the fat lazy ones or the ones with the fat kids that do it, the ones walking might do a bit of good for.

But there are those who appoint themself little Gods of all things parking.

Went to Tesco the other week with my mum who is in a wheelchair, we did a big shop as DH1 was able to take her in the car and take all her shopping home, So DH1 takes the shopping out and is loading it up while Mum and I are getting her lotto ticket and this old bloke who has parked across from our car comes up to DH1 and starts going on about him parking in the disabled bay, should be ashamed, blagh blagh blagh, (this bloke was NOT disabled, was NOT in a disabled bay and our tesco has 120 disabled bays that I have yet to see all full at the same time anyway).

DH1 (who is a better person then me) ignores this little fuckwit and carries on packing the shopping as I trundle out to the car with mum in all her disabled/amputee glory, bloke shuts up quick, My turn now... I think he will keep his mouth shut in the future even if he spots the KKK parking a bus length ways across the bays.

I admit I have in the past and before mum joined the ranks of the wheel me brigade reported to the security person people parking in the disabled bays with no badge and clearly no disability, but this chap was a prat, I quite enjoyed directing him to go forth and multiply

Actually I think P&T spaces should be as far away as possible from the stores but with a safe walkway for little walkers. In reality it's rarely more than three minutes from the farthest end of a car park to the store. Providing the trolleys are there for supermarkets (next to the spaces) there is no reason for them to be closer.

Pregnancy can be disabling. With DD I couldn't walk for several months and had a wheelchair - the council offered me a temp badge so I could use the disabled (I didn't in the end I shopped online because I was just too tired to go to the shops anyway) - but I think there is merit in allowing disabled spaces for 'self defined' disability ie bugger the badges, encourage people to be responsible. If you offered enough disabled parking for all those who needed it it wouldn't be an issue.

Agree with those who reckon people who park in P&T (or disabled) spaces and then sit in the car while someone else tottles off to the shops should be shot though!

Goodness WMMC I'd love that for ds3- the ability to use Disabled spaces. A bolting prone autistic 5 year old would happily defione as that in my mind. The coun cild were slated last week IIRC as so many have reduced blue badge entitlement to high rate mobility claimants only- so disallowing the short term impaired, or those of us with kids with no physical problems but LDs.

however, too manty tossers would abuse it.

A space away from the stoe with a walkway would do us fine. It's the traffic not the exercise I fear.

coun cild- councils

p&t spaces are wider in order to be able to get carseat and babies in and out.

having had to squeeze bumps past cars in normal spaces before i can completely understand why she parked there and tbh, think she was damn right.

one time dp had to actually back the car out for me to be able to get in as the drivers either side had left so little space i couldn't get through with the bump...god help me if i'd been on my own!

i think they should stop putting the p&t spaces right by the door and alot of problems would be resolved... too many peoppemthink it's a case of 'oh, lazyparents don't want to walk' when in fact it's the extra space to wrangle kids into the car that matters.

our closest tesco has the right idea, the rows of parking are perpendicular to the shop frontage, one row is all p&t on one side and all disabled on the other, all the way up to the back of the car park but with a footpath going up between the cars in the middle so you don't have to walk on the road. fabulous!

yes, we have a Tesco like that near us; and another one where the P&C spaces are perpendicular to the shop front with the path between them, but the disabled spaces are all along the shop front so they are always nearer to the shop and there is no need to cross the "road" at all. Good planning.