A lot of people are happily exchanging their driving licenses these days..... and creating a potential money earner for the City of Vancouver in the form of tickets!

Apparently i broke a by-law the other day, when i parked my car on the street, 'within 6 meters of the nearest edge of a sidewalk of an intersecting street'.

Perhaps i under-estimated how simple i am.... when i parked i ensured that i was causing no obstruction to pedestrian or vehicular traffic. And of course i ensured that i was neither within five meters of a fire hydrant nor 6 meters of Stop sign, but that seemingly was not enough.

I shall pay the 50 bucks and forget about it; but i post this as a warning / enlightenment to others in here, who might overlook the potential 'blessing in disguise' that is the straight swap of various driving documents, without also reading up on the gagillion fineable traffic offenses in this province.

This moment of driver's ed has cost me $50. If at least one of you can say "i didn't know that!" i can gain a little extra value for money!

Drive (and park) safely!

Here's another lesson for new people...

I got a $50 fine in Banff, for parking in a perfectly legal bay, but facing the wrong direction.

Did you drive into it forwards like a girl? If you did you deserve the fine for being a poof.

poof 2 (pf)
n. Offensive Slang
Used as a disparaging term for an effeminate or homosexual male.
[Probably alteration of puff, braggart, homosexual man, from puff (influenced by poof).]

Damn your eyes, sir, certainly not.

It was a parallel park on the road. Apparently you're only allowed to parallel park in the direction of travel.

Then you have my sincerest apologies. I did know that was illegal, but didn't know they would actually be anal enough to enforce it.

This is better than Morecombe & Wise.

A friend also got a fine for - um i'll explain this the best way I can -

Say you're driving forwards on a road through town somewhere (small town not big town) and on each side of the road you can pull in to park in front of shops but not paralell park - the type of bays where the cars stick their arses out so you literally just turn into the space.

Well a friend was driving, and saw a spot on the opposite side of the road so indicated left and pulled into it. No sooner had he got out of the car the local county mounty slapped a fine on him for crossing the road to get to a parking space.

Apparently he should have gone around the block or something to make sure that the parking space was on his right!!!!!

That's called an illegal turn. I normally look around first to see if there's any cop around to make such a turn.

it's a bit daft though eh in the grand scheme of things!

Of course not. Same as in the US.

A lot of people in Kelowna just ignore the rules of the road and do whatever they think is ok much to the dismay of the newly arrived British driver who has swapped his licence and is trying to do things right.

I see so many driving infractions each day i think that if i was a traffic cop in disguise i would be getting an award for number of tickets issued.

Bit of a moot point as to whether it's the same in the states seeing as it happened here and poor old Jings was not aware of the rules!

(and yes we are aware that you should read up on rules of the road before you move - but really unless you have to take another test - did anyone? I learn as I go along through others mistakes - Thanks Jings )

A small town, so cops have nothing else to do but give tickets like that. I hardly see any cops on the streets since I moved to Canada from the US.

I have to agree with you but exchange the US for the UK. They do have a habit of materialising when you least expect em to though