Bad Parking and Traffic Madness

FORMBY is mostly very quiet, but thanks to very poor sign posting and also traffic enforcement, the roads around St. Luke’s Church and the Formby Pine Woods were in chaos on Bank Holiday Monday. For some time residents in Freshfield have complained about day trippers parking badly, as have residents by Formby Point, but recent parking restrictions elsewhere have displaced the problem and a monumental log -jam ensued at Formby Point. A large bottleneck had developed for most of Bank Holiday Monday with cars being parked all over the place, with no regards for safety or residents. Whilst the majority of visitors respected the properties and rights of others, unfortunately a significant minority were hell-bent on reaching the beach no matter the consequences of their actions. Some drivers blocked drive ways, others parked on crossing points and junctions, making life for pedestrians very dangerous, yet to our knowledge, despite breaking many parking laws, none of these inconsiderate drivers received tickets. The Police did attended later on, but said that they had many issues to deal with that day which is undeniable, they must have been very hard pressed to cope. The Police had been called by the Sefton Rangers, who themselves did a stunning job of trying to get some order to the cars that flooded Lifeboat Road Car Park. Residents also tried to help, but were often met with a barrage of abusive language. These photographs and video show just some of the things that happened, yet these, apparently, were not the worst of it. One of the clear examples of very dangerous and inconsiderate parking that were cited was that of a black 4x4, parked on the corner of a through road. It nearly caused a several major accidents according to local residents who had been watching aghast. When they challenged the offender they were dismissed with swearwords. We witnessed another incident when a mother and child nearly got hit by a car which could not see them crossing and they could not see the car.  Just after we had taken a shot of that location, another car had parked in front of the very end of a line of parked vehicles, forcing pedestrians to walk behind the 4x4. As you can, see some of the cars we filmed thought of and even attempted to park behind it, but spotted us filming and thought twice. Another example of the day’s madness was a silver car, parked on the main junction of the roads to the car park, the church and the leisure centre and it is a bus route. I was told by a large group of locals on the corner that when that car had parked up on the crossing, it was full of young ladies who shouted abuse at other drivers and at visually impaired pedestrian who wanted to cross the junction. As many said on the day:- "God help anyone who might have needed an ambulance or fire engine, or even the Coast Guard!” If you are on Merseyside and have photographs of poor parking on the Bank Holiday Monday, please do send them to us at Southport Reporter! Residents along with visitors who had walked from Formby station, and even fellow motorists. who had parked in the car park at Formby Point were all saying that this was:- “moronic drivers at their best!”  With another Bank Holiday looming it is imperative that a solution is found to prevent this fiasco reoccurring, then or on any subsequent occasion.

If you do visit the coast, please remember to think of residents, predestions and also of emergency services! Plus, remember if your car is involved in causing an accident and you are illegally parked, you can be prosecuted, even if you are not in it!  Email us your viewers to:- news24@southportreporter.com or leave us a message on our Facebook Page.