Sunday 2 August 2009

Product placement: AA

Some of our viewers come from Abroad, where Abroad means further afield than Wales or the Isle of Wight, and these readers leave notes saying "what the zig-zags we keep mentioning".

Zig-zags are the lines before and after zebra and other pedestrian crossings, which indicate that under no circumstances should you ever think of parking there. Because of that restriction, they are not normally used for commuter and resident parking.

This leaves them as the primary short-stay parking area in the inner city. The tendency of zebra crossings to be placed near schools and shops makes them key locations for short stay shopping or parental dropoff.

Today, we see a yellow van EU06NUY with flashing lights up on one on Cotham Brow
From the side, you can see that it is an AA van helping broken down cars. Someone further down the hill appears to have run out of petrol; the AA breakdown van is on call to rescue them.


Although this seems to endanger pedestrians, it doesn't really, because while it may make it harder for approaching vehicles to see people about to cross the road, if the drivers are not going to stop for pedestrians anyway, it makes no difference whatsoever.

Once you recognise that, that zebra-markings are just a quaint memory of a distant past when children walked to school, it's then clear that their sole remaining use really is short-stay parking. They have no other purpose in our fair city.

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