I'm an idiot - Drove in bus lane twice in a day...

Martynt74

Martynt74

Martynt74

Soldato
Joined
20 Feb 2004
Posts
23,130
Location
Hondon de las Nieves, Spain
It's fairly rare i drive in Preston, so when taking my wife to the train station last week, i hadn't realised they'd changed a small part of road which links one road to the train station road into a bus lane.

ynqt4cS.png


Grey bit is my route, the circled bit is the new bus lane. I remember they changed the whole road to the right of the circle into a bus lane (got caught there too!), but it seems they updated the circled bit to be included too, and now you're supposed to only go left rather than cut straight over. It seems this caused an uproar in 2019 when it was changed, however i was completely unaware.


Given i've fallen foul of this on both dropping the wife up and also picking her up on the same day. Anyone think i might have grounds to claim stupidity and appeal the second one later in the day?

I can't claim it's not signposted as the street view below shows it is, i've obviously either just missed that as i wasn't paying attention as i thought it was fine and knew the route, or i assumed it just meant you couldn't turn right and i had assumed my route was classed as straight over, as i know i couldn't turn right and carry on up the road.

gJqxIg2.png




If anything i'm lucky i didn't get 4 tickets for all 4 times over the junction!

Obviously i don't really have a proper defence, and worst case it's only £70 for both fines assuming i pay within 21 days, but it'd be nice to not to!


EDIT - Weirdly, it seems that coming from the top bit to the station isn't classed as a bus lane, but coming from the station and back over is classed as one. I think this is where i got confused, as i had used google maps to get there, and then just followed the same route.
 
Last edited:
I do have some sympathy. When you know a place but haven't been there in a little while, sign posts/layout changes often get missed as you drive by memory.

I think it's one of those bend-over and learn from it scenarios.
 
Now I see what's going on it's obvious, but it took me about 5 mins of looking at it to figure it out. I'm a pretty smart person, so I've got to assume this was designed to trick people and raise money for the council.

So I have sympathy, but you aren't getting out of it, just pay up and move on with your life.
 
Last edited:
throwaway4372 said:
Now I see what's going on it's obvious, but it took me about 5 mins of looking at it to figure it out. I'm a pretty smart person, so I've got to assume this was designed to trick people and raise money for the council.

So I have sympathy, but you aren't getting out of it, just pay up and move on with your life.
Click to expand...

Yeah the 3 4 signs stating it's a bus/cycle lane if you turn right is very deceiving ;) :p
 
Last edited:
MrRockliffe said:
Yeah the 3 4 signs stating it's a bus/cycle lane if you turn right is very deceiving ;) :p
Click to expand...
There are problems with all the signs though.

"bus and cycle lane right" x2
- text too small
- a bus lane doesn't mean no car lane also, usually there is a bus lane and car lane together

"except cycles" [nearest]
- text is broken, some sticker on it or something

"except cycles" [furthest]
- optical illusion with corner of building behind it
- sign does not have a white background with black border to avoid that issue

This junction has a general "too much stuff going on" issue. I don't think it's reasonable to expect someone to take all this in. My eyes are drawn to the train station sign and tall wall where pedestrians are going to come from and walk right out in front of me.

I've made it infinitely easier to deal with in 5 mins in Paint:

R2qsziw.png
 
I have no idea what those signs are saying.
That looks so confusing. If I had come across this randomly I don't think I'd know it was a bus lane.

I still don't really understand what's going on there. Usually bus lanes are marked on the road.

Is the only relavent bit "no right turn"

Or better.. "No right turn except Buses and cycles only"
 
Last edited:
Ive been driving 30 years with no points or fines ( before anyone starts lol ) and to be honest i think i could easily have made the same mistake there. The signage is ambiguous at best and not clear enough.

I would expect to see a car motorbike on a red cross though circular sign and a wacking great BUS LANE NO ENTRY at minimum. Or a sign like sown in the post above.
 
Appeal it. This kind of stuff winds me up. Yes we can all read, but to read and take in signage like that with the car moving in real time.... I just find it all well annoying. My Mrs got done in Bath years ago in a very similar situation. Some of the signage was on the actual road surface covered by parked cars and cars in front of her in the queue. She'd never been there before ever, was stressful enough finding the venue she was due at miles away, raining, traffic etc. Then you have to cope with these money making schemes. When I received it I showed her and she felt like a ****. Something really annoyed me about it so I appealed on the count of poor signage amongst other things as recommended by that pepipoo site. After a couple of months they wrote back saying the appeal was upheld and the ticket rejected.

EDIT: Which to me says they know half of them are not up to legal compliance and are just chancing that people will bend over and pay the "discounted rate" of paying within X period. Scum.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom