Student rushes to help pensioner: rewarded with a parking fine

Drew Hollinshead, a 21-year-old studying in Bournemouth, was driving through the town when he saw a pensioner had collapsed in the street. He parked in the nearest space he could see, and ran to see if he could help. When he returned to his car less than a minute later, he discovered that his kindness had been repaid with a parking ticket.

He told the Bournemouth Echo that the parking space he'd quickly swerved into had been reserved for disabled drivers, but that he was concerned the woman was seriously injured, so had chosen the nearest possible place to stop. When he reached the pensioner, he discovered that she had fallen over, but was not badly hurt, so he helped her to her feet and returned to his car. He said he had been stopped for 45 seconds at the most.

However, by the time he reached his car, a parking officer was already writing him a ticket. He told the Daily Mail that he was particularly angry because the warden would have seen exactly what had happened.

Bournemouth Council said that it wouldn't comment on the case, but that any motorist who received a fine could appeal it.
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Outrageous fines

This isn't the first time that a parking warden has proven ridiculously keen to slap someone with a fine. In fact in February 2013, exactly the same thing happened to a woman in Portobello who had pulled into a disabled bay in order to administer first aid to a woman lying face down in the street.

We reported back in November last year on the woman who had pulled over onto double yellow lines in a quiet street in Kensington at 11am on Armistice Day, and stood by her car to remember those who had fallen in the First World War. During her two-minutes of silence, a warden slapped a ticket onto her car.

The previous March, a driver in Bristol had pulled over to check the parking restrictions written on a sign. As soon as he realised he couldn't park at that time, he pulled away again, but in the 90 seconds he had been stationary, he had earned himself a fine. The letter informing him of the fine showed a picture of his car - with him clearly standing next to it reading the sign. The council confirmed the fine had been cancelled.

A month earlier a driver in Bradford was photographed by a mobile traffic camera, and sent a parking ticket for being stationery at a bus stop. The photograph showed that he hadn't been parked: he was stuck in traffic, and the council cancelled the ticket after he appealed.

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