Parking Eye - Welcome Break Newcastle Under Lyme.

The_Deep

It is a free car park.

Really, and here was me thinking that they charged £10 -12 for a stay of more than two hours, where on earth did I get that silly notion.

And as for a meal voucher, they may well give you one if you pay, but if you don't they most certainly do not.

Half_way

There is a world of differnce between a motorway service area car park, and a pay and display car park.
MSA car parks provide a safety critical function, that is they are there as rest areas for tired drivers.
The whole premise of free 2 hour parking is wholly incompatible with the pull over and take a rest safety ethos.
If people are pressured into only stopping for as little while as they will have to pay a £10 charge theres a risk they may move off before they are fully rested.


Instead of attacking the OP for so called bilking you should be grateful that He/She made the correct decision to take a nap, and as a result the OP arrived home/at their destination, they are alive and well, and so are all the other road users/pedestrians that he/she would have passed on the way back home.

As far as im concerned the safety aspect trumps any poxy charges. as a Road user myself I would hope that other drivers would do as the OP did and take a break when tired.

This is what can happen when it all goes wrong, beleive it or not this was caused by a road user whose vehicle crashed onto railway lines. One of the contributing factors to that disaster was a lack of sleep.


Hart, of Strubby, Lincolnshire, was unable to move his vehicle off the tracks and was calling the emergency services when the crash happened.
He had had little sleep the night before and was later found guilty of 10 counts of causing death by dangerous driving. Hart was sentenced to five years in prison.
Selby Rail Crash http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-12591249




And in case weve forgotten amongst all this ridiculous crap about bilking, this from the OP:

Couple weeks back I drove south from Aberdeen to London to buy a car for my friend. It took us 13 and a half hours to get down, we got the car and started heading back home. At around 2am he wanted to stop somewhere to sleep and selected the first random Service station we came across.. I at this point was utterly shattered and it was becoming a real hazard to continue driving.. my eyes kept almost closing.

So we stopped somewhere, parked up and get a few hours kip in a MASSIVE car park which was almost empty, bar a few lorrys parked up with the curtains closed.

The_Deep

I am afraid you have missed my point, I was asking if the latin phrase which means "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is relevant in the circumstance here.

However, my take on your points are, yes a time limit is wrong in MSAs but it is a fact. If you stay longer and do not pay then the landowner has a right to pursue you for the unpaid amount.

I do not agree with Councils charging for parking on roads for which I have already paid, but they do.

If you do not pay to park when a charge applies you must take responsibility for the consequences, just as you must when you fill up with petrol and drive off without paying.

I will ask again, do you think that it is right that the wishes of landowners with respect to the use of their land can be ignored. Many MSAs have hotels on site, use them, or, if you are a tightwad, pay the £10 the landowner is asking.

With regard to the Selby train crash, Hart should not have set out on his journey, he had been on the telephone all night to a woman he had met on the internet before his Land Rover and trailer ran off the M62 and on to the East Coast mainline I do not understand why you mentioned it.

esmerobbo

MSA's should have longer then the 2 hours allowed but putting that aside. Landowners do have a right to charge and if the charge is made clear to the motorist then it should be paid.

However PE or the like would not make any money if everybody moved on or paid. So what do they do they make the signs difficult to see and or to understand.

As I posted earlier the signs at Keele are very easy to miss, is that a coincidence or a plan?

When I was in haulage they never bothered with cars, on the HGV side they had a man who would walk around and asked if you were staying the night, if so he charged you £7.50 and you got a receipt and a voucher for £2.50 to use in the services. I bet the MSA's actually made a profit on this system as most would pay the man. The foreign truck drivers would shrug their shoulders and draw the curtains.

I never minded paying these the driver gave me the receipt and I paid the driver.

Once the PPC's arrived with the CCTV the drivers were told not to use MSA's overnight.

trisontana

You have to ask your self once again, did PE make a loss because that person did not pay the parking fee? If anyone made a loss it was the landowner. So why are PEW demanding£100? I bet they don't pass that on to the landowner when it's paid by the motorist.

The_Deep

You have to ask your self once again, did PE make a loss because that person did not pay the parking fee?

Someone did, whoever trousers the £10 or £12 due did not get it, the driver did not pay it.

This argument is facile. If the landowner wants to charge for stays of longer than two hours on his land, he is perfectly entitled to do so. if you do not want to pay that charge, do not overstay. If you do overstay and do not pay, expect the landowner to take action to recover the debt.

trisontana

PE did not suffer any loss, so why should they claim that money? The landowner did not take any action to recover that so-called debt. It was PE.

The_Deep

As I posted earlier the signs at Keele are very easy to miss, is that a coincidence or a plan? (esmerobbo)

Are you sure?

Unless it has since been removed or replaced, the sign at 53.59.34.53N, 2.17.22.00W on Google Earth could not be clearer, have a look.

Herzlos

The_Deep wrote: »

It is a free car park.

Really, and here was me thinking that they charged £10 -12 for a stay of more than two hours, where on earth did I get that silly notion.

And as for a meal voucher, they may well give you one if you pay, but if you don't they most certainly do not.

Yet if you leave after 1:59 and drive back in it's still free.

The_Deep wrote: »

If you do not pay to park when a charge applies you must take responsibility for the consequences, just as you must when you fill up with petrol and drive off without paying.

Except with parking there was no actual deprivation of any assets, and with the petrol it's clear theft. I know you want to try and equate parking to bilking or theft, but that doesn't make it so.

However, my take on your points are, yes a time limit is wrong in MSAs but it is a fact. If you stay longer and do not pay then the landowner has a right to pursue you for the unpaid amount.

Indeed they can, which would be the £10-12 minus the £10 food voucher. Not £100. If they were to pursue them for the ~£2 loss, plus costs (£2.50 DVLA and maybe £1 in admin + stamp, for a total of £5.50) the OP would have just paid them.

Herzlos

The_Deep wrote: »

As I posted earlier the signs at Keele are very easy to miss, is that a coincidence or a plan? (esmerobbo)

Are you sure?

Unless it has since been removed or replaced, the sign at 53.59.34.53N, 2.17.22.00W on Google Earth could not be clearer, have a look.

I can see a couple of red signs on streetview, that don't appear to be lit, and I can't read from streetview. I doubt you could read them from a moving car during the day, let alone in the dark, therefore there's no consideration from the driver and no contract.

Like I said, if they actually wanted you to see them and be be out in 2 hours, they could make that much more obvious (light/flashing signs, "2 HOUR MAX STAY" written on the tarmac in 3ft letters, etc). They don't though, as their income is derived almost entirely from people who don't spot the signs and overstay.