It always comes as a pleasant surprise when a citizen takes on the might of a local council and wins. In this case, it was over parking in the very wide section of Rameb Kurradu Street, what used to be called Jules Verne Street, in San Pawl Tat-Tarġa.

This area has featured more than once in this monthly column and I also had the opportunity of telling the council secretary to stop wardens from booking parked vehicles because there was a white edge of lane marker. This road is over 11 metres wide and parking boxes were only painted on one side; however, motorists obviously cannot be booked at councils’ whim because there are no painted boxes, partly because they are a guide to maintain the maximum number of vehicles that can be parked in a given area, and not a legal requirement. Yellow No Parking or No Waiting lines are the enforcement guides.

Painted boxes are a guide to the maximum number of vehicles that can be parked in an area, and are not a legal requirement

At least two residents were regularly booked for parking on the side of the road adjacent to their houses, always winning their cases. However, recently the wardens changed tack and began booking for obstruction. What a load of nonsense! Obstruction only takes place if vehicles get stuck, not because two giant lorries may find it hard to pass in a strictly residential road.

A legal firm was finally contacted, and I am reliably informed that Naxxar council has been severely chided for not applying for a permit that would, if successful, have presumably allowed the council to stop vehicles parking on one side. A white painted line along the pavement is never a No Parking line.

Furthermore, the council appears to have been informed that various signs have been erected without the obligatory Transport Malta approval.

Road signs

We read with great concern that a driver died in a horrific head-on crash with a lorry on the 80 km/h bend on the road from Salina to Ta’ Alla u Ommu hill. Yes, in dry weather the bend in question is perfectly safe at 80 km/h, even in my 1978 Mini.

I have long preached that if Transport Malta understood the use of road signs they would not be planted willy-nilly with gay abandon, but they would be carefully placed, as in the rest of the EU, where drivers would see them, and take note that the authorities actually knew what road signage was all about.

This bend would in my book be marked with a Bend sign in both directions, but as 80 km/h is our maximum limit and the bend is, in my experience, safe at that speed, on a dry day, a Bend sign would suffice.

If there are bends on our arterial network that are unsafe at the designated speed limit for that area they should be marked as Bend, with a message board reading Slow.

There is also a very strong case for painting Slow in white letters on a black ground on the carriageway. The reasoning here is that motorists are more likely to obey painted road markings than the multitude of largely irrelevant road signs.

A knee-jerk reaction to this horrific crash was to almost immediately construct four sets of dangerously high rumble strips. Actually, they are too high and far too close together, as I and other motorists whose cars have small wheels have found out.

The dreadful suspension jarring at all normal speeds [a Porsche owner tells me that 100 km/h allows smooth passage in his car] is, I would suggest, a further source of danger for all who have to use the road on a regular basis, as suspension damage will be accumulative and probably not recognised in time to prevent something breaking. The plus side is that, after only a few days, some of the strips are breaking up.

Whoever was responsible also took it upon themselves to construct small areas of red finish [why not legal black?] on the carriageway, and then with gay abandon, Slow was painted on the red background in yellow [why not legal white?]. There are hundreds of motorists who are colour blind, and I am told picking out yellow on red is about as daft as one can get.

Its amazing that in 2014, 119 years after the internal combustion engine became useful, we, in Malta, are so plum ignorant that yellow on red is considered avant-garde, to the point where vulnerable people may become confused and under­stand what has been written so late that they have, in fact, not altered their speed by one kilometre per hour. Good-on-yer guys, keep up this interesting approach to contemporary signage.

Seriously; why can’t the relevant department at Transport Malta, after controlling things for 13 years, not be absolutely on the signage ‘ball’? It’s not rocket science, but it does demand an on-site intelligent approach to each problem.

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