Information purposes only!
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Beaconsfield Railway Station have just opened their 2 floor car park.

The height restriction to the approach is mentioned in (crude translation of) metric units only.

Just thought you'd like to know, perhaps BWMA can email the station concerned or the local council?

Not at the current time, we are occupied with something else.
However, there is a standard letter half way down this page.
http://www.bwmaonline.com/Join%20-%20Signage.htm

You need only add that the law applies to carpark signs if intended to be seen by road users.
Please note, the 1994 regulations have now been replaced by the 2002 regulations.

Have done!

I posted a previous report that in 2001 I told the London Olympia that the height restriction for their car park, being expressed solely as 4m, was against the 1994 TSRGD. They wrote back and told me otherwise and that they got legal advice over this.

That cat park is surely where the public are meant to have access - does this post say that I've been getting misled?

The TSRDG (both the 1994 and the 2002 versions) were made by the Secretary of State using powers conferred to him under the 1984 Road Traffic Act. That Act only empowers him to make orders in respect of signs on highways. Car parks are not highways (they do not go from A to B), so the TSRDG orders do not apply to car parks.

If you go to your public library, you can probably get a copy of the 1984 Road Traffic Act, though if you go to a small library, you might be refered to a larger library.

The number of libraries I have seen which stock even a small number of statute books is disappointingly small.

Try asking for them as Enquiries - very often such books are not on the shelves (at any rate they are not at the Woking and Staines libraries).

The regulations do not apply to signs within car parks. They do, however, apply to vehicles turning in from a road.

....otherwise all cul-de-sac's would be littered with nasty little metric signs!

Actually, I think the rule regarding signs at the entrance to, and within, car parks is very much a grey area.

The BWMA Forum Owner expresses the view that 'signs within car parks are not covered by the regulations'.

That suggests, at least, that all signs *at the entrance to car parks* should be in feet and inches.

Logically, of course, it would be daft to have a set of regulations warning you in advance that the height of a car park is, say, ' 6' 6" ', only then to find that at the entrance to the car park it says ' 2.0m '.

However, the Department for Transport publicly concedes that even on 'private property', if the road or highway is one 'to which the public have access', then the signs must conform with the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002.

This DfT pronouncement was paralleled by the decision in DPP v. Jones [House of Lords, 1977], which defined the meaning of 'highway'.

In that case, pro-Druid protestors were unanimously held by the House of Lords to be allowed to assemble on a privately-owned piece of land - because they were on that part of the land that had a public footpath (and hence, they held, a 'highway') passing through it. The Police were held to have wrongfully arrested them for 'obstruction'.

Examples of privately-owned land to which the public has access, and therefore to which the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 clearly apply, would include:

1. Airports
2. Docks
3. Railways stations e.g. Waterloo
4. National Trust property
5. Hospital grounds
6. Public car parks.

Logically, if signs must be in Imperial units *before* entering a car park, and according to the BWMA Forum Owner (with whom I agree) also *at the entrance to the car park*, then they should also be in Imperial units *within* the car park.

To give actual examples, you shouldn't have an airport signing speed limits within the airport in kilometres per hour, nor an exit road from National Trust property saying: 'Give Way 100 Metres'.

ARM believes that the law requires Imperial signage before, at the entrance to, and within, any private property *to which the public has access"