Crikey, what a clanger

Ruth Ducker had legally parked her car on a street around the corner from her London home for two years. One day this past winter, the city commissioned contractors to paint double-yellow lines along the outer edge of the street, designating it as a no-parking zone.

Unfortunately, the contractors were the only people whom the city notified about the change. So when a crew arrived to paint the new lines, they found Ducker’s Volkswagen Golf parked in their way.

Undaunted, the team decided that the best course of action was to hoist Ducker’s car into the air so they could paint under it. Once the yellow lines were in place, they carefully lowered Ducker’s car back into its original—and now illegal—spot.

A short while later, London police happened upon Ducker’s car and, seeing that it was blatantly parked on top of double-yellow lines, had it impounded.

Ducker, a 44-year-old mother of two, was unaware that any of this was going on, so when she left her home later that day, she was surprised to find that her car was missing. Spotting the new yellow lines, she figured that it must have been towed and called City Hall.

It took three weeks for the city to figure out what happened and return Ducker’s car. They admitted that a “breakdown in communication” with their contractors was to blame and that perhaps they should have given some advance notice to residents or even the police about the new parking restrictions.

It then took an additional two months and the help of Ducker’s local member of Parliament to make the city erase her $1,300 parking fine, which by then had skyrocketed to $3,700.

In return for her inconvenience, the city offered Ducker $250 in compensation. She may just need it now that she has to find a new place to park.

They’ve got his number

Whenever someone noticed that Robert Lamkin’s license plate number was just a zero and asked if he was someone important, he replied, “No, I’m just nothin’.”

The infamous zero plate, the lowest license plate number in Illinois, has been passed down through Lamkin’s family for nearly 40 years and today his grandson Tom Feddor, 39, is the proud owner.

However, because of a glitch at the Chicago Department of Revenue, Feddor also was wanted by the police for 170 parking violations over the past two years.

Feddor insisted that he couldn’t possibly have committed all of the infractions, but the city wouldn’t listen.

Eventually the Chicago Tribune got involved, and the Department of Revenue decided to launch an internal investigation.

It turns out that “0” was being used as the default license plate number during a series of ticketing equipment tests. Officials weren’t aware that zero was a valid license plate number or that their tests were resulting in a cascade of tickets being mailed out.

In June, the city finally agreed to clear the infractions from Feddor’s record and refund any fines he had already paid.

Considering the history of low-number plates in the state, Feddor was convinced that he was being harassed by a bigwig who wanted his number. Before Feddor’s family acquired the zero plate, the lowest plate number in the state was 1, owned by governors, archbishops and even the lawyer who wrote the original state law in 1907 requiring vehicle licensing and registration.

Nope, it was all just a clerical error and Feddor is free to continue being the biggest nothin’ in the state.