It seems that the major chains are not doing well when it comes to satisfying the local councils. While I wait to find out whether the local Tesco will have its alcohol license suspension upheld, the main Sainsburys in Crawley has been fined £7,500 for not doing enough to stop boy racers using the car park for noisy meets. Costs of nearly the same amount were also awarded, costing the chain almost £15,000 in total, on top of their own legal bill.
The problem that Sainsburys has is that it is not easy to stop people getting into the car park when the store is closed. McDonalds and Homebase also have outlets there and the petrol station is (I think) open 24 hours. There is a gate on the slip road leading to the main car park, but to close it would probably cause problems (not least of which is that it is not easy for cars to turn back if they use the slip road). Besides, the entry to the petrol station also allows you to drive into the car park from the other direction.
However, it is their car park, and it is being used for behaviour that has caused serious annoyance to people living in nearby houses (a matter of yards away). The real problem is probably that as it isn't a highway, the police can't easily stop the miscreants on traffic offences, and Sainsburys has until recently been loath to spend money on trying to enforce reasonable use of their own property.
(I saw this on the BBC, but the story there has disappeared, so here's a link to the Argus, who appear to at least keep articles on local news in a findable place for longer)
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3 comments:
The thing about Sainsbury is not that they did nothing about the boy racers its that they did something... something stupid.
They put in some speed bumps. They are quite serious ones which really would be uncomfortable to go over quickly. So far so good, but they put in the staggered ones which only cover your half of the road, and actually encourage drivers to slalom round them. (I have seen it)
And if you are a kiddie-racer in your twat-mobile you will speed up a bit to do it - but if you are going to go onto the wrong side of the road to avoid the speed bumps you don't want to spend too much time there.
Best of all - these are placed on the zebra crossings so at the very place where you are supposed to cross with your groceries on the way back to your car there is something to encourage most drivers to slow down but a few to speed up.
Brilliant!
Had they just put speed bumps on either side of the crossings but made them go all the way across it would have been fine.
Not that the boy-racers stick to the roads at night when the car park is mostly empty.
Having the drive-through MacDonalds doesn't really help though. It is a magnet for hot hatch drivers later in the evening.
I've seen morons slaloming around those humps at the crossings during the day - not just boy racers but the middle aged people who would probably claim to be good drivers. Still, if you can avoid humps, you would - suspension repairs aren't cheap.
Driving over them very slowly is still an option...
BUT I was at Sainsbury today and those humps have gone. They are now putting posts between the rows of parking spaces to stop boy racers driving straight across.
Unfortunately they only seem to be doing every other bay, so plenty of room to fit a Saxo inbetween at high speed.
They have not learned their lesson and are again doing half a job and providing a challenge to bored teenagers.
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