A few years ago I had 2 near misses in close succession - certainly taught me to be more careful...
Once I was out of my usual area, in Harrow, and having difficulty locating the WG that I had booked. There was nowhere easy to pull over, and I ended up around the back of the bus station. Definitely not possible to park, but I pulled up for a few minutes to use the phone and sort out directions - didn't even get out of the car. Bastard council had cameras that nicked you for even stopping
Ticket came through in the post - luckily my car is registered to work, so it turned up there - not great, but a lot easier to explain than if it had arrived at home! To make matters worse it was a scam punt
Secondly, again a bit out of my patch, I parked up in Slough early evening - it was just getting dark. I street parked, checked the signs carefully and decided that I was OK. Was I buggery! The restrictions changed at 7pm, but the sign was not clear and in the dark. The bad part was that the arseholes stuck a parking ticket on my windscreen -
on the passenger side. When I returned to the car, I crossed from the opposite side, and got into the drivers side without seeing it. I drove home (about an hour) and parked up - next morning I looked out of the window and thought - what the fuck is that on my windscreen! Luckily Mrs H was away, so I was able to retrieve it and deal with it. If I'd used my windscreen wipers on the way home it would probably have disappeared. I complained to the council about the position of the ticket - they said that the wardens are not allowed to go out into the road to stick them on the drivers side for health and safety reasons - FFS! How do these cunts cross the road to ticket the drivers on the other side!
Both cases I paid up to avoid any further risk of exposure, but lessons learned. I hate public car parks, but nearly always use them for punting now, and pay well over time to avoid any risk of a ticket!