Drivers have slammed new parking restrictions in place for popular cars which sees them unfairly fined for not fitting in bays, with motorists taking to social media to vent their frustration.
Under the new rules issued by some councils, cars that are deemed to be “too big” to fit into car parking bays will be fined or banned from entering multi-storey car parks.
Popular models such as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Range Rovers, Tesla Model S, BMW 7 Series, Audi A8, Rolls-Royce Cullinan, Kia EV9 models and others will now be prohibited from parking in certain areas.
Councils in Wokingham, South Hampshire, Broadland, South Suffolk, and West Devon are some of the local authorities imposing the ban.
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UK parking bays are roughly 2.4 metres wide and 4.8 metres long
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In response, drivers shared their fury after finding out councils handed out more than 357,000 penalty charge notices for cars parked outside marked bays.
In total, drivers have been fined more than £8million over the last six years for failing to fit in standard parking bays.
GB News readers expressed their “shock” and demanded strong measures to stop drivers getting punished for their vehicle size.
Commenting on Facebook, one user said, Britain needs to take “urgent action over the size of parking spaces, the current situation is ridiculous”.
Another reader explained that car spaces are still designed from the specifications of vehicles from the 1960s, adding: “I’m not surprised spaces are so small.”
Elsewhere, a third reader said: “Fines, fines, fines. The whole country is being ripped off, left right and centre.”
As anger over the parking fines grows, another person claimed: “Cars have got bigger but the roads and car park spaces haven’t… We’re run by morons!”
Standard spaces for on-street parking are 2.4 metres wide and 4.8 metres long, although one expert has called for an increase in sizes.
To allow wider vehicles to fit, the British Parking Association has suggested bays to increase from 4.8m to five metres.
The group also recommended the width of a standard parking bay increase from 2.4m to 2.6m.
The new length would help accommodate the average vehicle increase which has expanded to 180.3cm in the first half of 2023 from 177.8cm in 2018.
Nicholas Mantel, head of Churchill Motor Insurance, added that widening cars combined with parking bays that haven’t been redesigned in years means motorists all over the country “are at risk of damaging their cars through no fault of their own”.
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Drivers have been fined more than £8million in parking fines in the last six years for not fitting in spaces
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He said: “Ask almost any driver and they will have a story about having to creatively escape their car due to a lack of space when in a car park, even crawling out through the boot.”