Narrow Parking Spaces

Recently in a local underground car park, I had my car damaged, the parking spaces in this car park were too narrow to park safely in especially in a busy period, which it was when my car was damaged. Luckily the damage was not too bad, just a big dent in the rear left hand passenger door and some scratched paintwork, and i'm hoping the repair bill will not be too much, as the driver who caused the damage didn't leave his insurance details - something all too common these days as people don't want to loose their no claims bonus on their car insurance, so that they can keep their insurance cost down.

However my gripe is - that too many car parks these days are designed for getting the maximum number of spaces in, without thinking about how wide spaces should be in order for safe parking. There are a growing number of car parks in this country where I feel I have to try and find a part of the car park that is not so full, in order to park safely. Also I get annoyed when in a car park with tight spaces, I see idiots who have parked too close to one side of the space, making it harder for the empty space next to the them to be parked in correctly.

This reminds me of a another multi-story car park I have been in, all the spaces where on a slope, which was even worse for parking as the slope was at right angles to where you parked. It's time that designers of car parks designed them for safety as well as getting the most they can in the car park.

I guess I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, when I had my car damaged, however that's life and I have to hope that it won't be too much to repair, as I don't want to make a claim on my insurance as it is not my fault, and do not want a bigger bill just because of some other drivers stupidity.

Desktop Widgets

I have discovered a great tool made by Yahoo! - the Yahoo! Widget Engine. It seems that Widgets are the next thing on PC / Apple Mac desktops. A Widget is a small tool that can display all sorts of information such as:

• Latest news via RSS or a direct site feed
• Web cam images
• Weather
• Sudoku
  

and more. It's great to have these tools on your desktop, as its the quickest way to get the information that you need, and have it at your fingertips. It's nice to see someone come up with a tool that's great. My desktop currently has 3 widgets - a Stock Widget to display my share prices, a Day Planner overview, which connects to my calendar in Thunderbird, taking the info from the calendars in there, and an RSS feed widget, to display the news I want on my desktop.

I have also created 2 widgets. One displays the latest posts to my blog, and the other the latest entries to the discussion groups I run at Yahoo! Groups (Boney M Discussion List, James Last Discussion List and Goombay Dance Band Discussion List) If you want the widget for this blog, you can download it from my personal website, and the widget for my Yahoo! Groups is available in the files section of each group.

To get the Yahoo! Widget Engine visit http://widget.yahoo.com

Speed Cameras

Finally, the Government is seeing sense - that the motorist doesn't like speed cameras. Supposedly they are there to make roads safer but in my opinion some cameras are only there for the following:

• To make enough money to pay for more cameras, and make the camera partnership loads of money
  
• To enforce a lowered speed limit on a road

Speed Cameras are a good idea, but they should only be used as a last resort, once all other road safety avenues have been explored. The Government is right that the time has come to halt the numbers of speed cameras being put on our roads. I feel that some speed cameras are placed in places designed to make loads of money, for example just before the A3 becomes the M275 in Portsmouth by the ferry port, and the speed limit changes from 40 to 70 there is a Truevelo speed camera, cleverly placed to make money, as it is just before the limit changes, and catches motorists who have speeded up to early. If a speed camera is to be used then there must be a good reason such as a High accident rate where the camera is to be situated, or the need to keep speed at a reasonable level, not just to make money.

It's time that traffic police went out and caught drunk drivers, drug ridden drivers and any driver, or those tailgating / committing road rage, rather than penalising those who might go 3-4 miles per hour over the speed limit!

Bloggin from my mobile

Tis 00:16 and I am testing adding posts to my blog via my mobile. seems to be working well. Stay tuned for another blog update shortly!