New Vancouver Parking Ticket Available

A supporter in Canada wrote to us today. He's been inspired by our campaign , and designed his own ticket for Vancouver. He writes: "I loved the parking ticked idea so much that I made fake parking tickets for the city. I live in (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada). I based the tickets on yours, but updated the language and statistics to reflect a Canadian world view." We think they look great.

In his words: 'You'd be amazed how hard it is to actually get a parking ticket in the downtown west side of Vancouver. Well, to get one without getting your vehicle towed. However today I hit pay dirt and as a result have completed this fine fake Vancouver anti-urban 4x4 parking ticket which you can print out and distribute to your hearts content.'

We've already seen one request for the link to these tickets. Let's hope this starts a trend!

New Citroen 4x4 - Crosser or tosser?

A supporter sent us this email today: 'I just wrote to you to register my protest against 4x4s sparked off by the new Citroen C Crosser. To find you, I googled anti 4x4s. The first result was for the new Citroen, just beyond the pale!'

Well, we thought the French were only producing economical vehicles. It seems that they too feel the urge for some short term profits. It's a pity - sort of like New Zealand deciding to grow genetically mutated crops when it had the chance to be the one 'gm free and organically certified country'.

Should we ticket the Lexus RX-400 Hybrid? Yes!

An angry owner of a Lexus RX400 hybrid 4x4 wrote to us today: "dear bunch off offensive, chippy, clearly nothing better to do tossers.

i have just returned to my lexus rx400h to find a rather bitter note on my car suggesting that i am an offender,' conned or just overexcited when i saw an advert for a shiny 4 x 4'. if you lot weren't so thick you would realise that 'h' stands for hybrid. a hybrid car is an alternative fuel source car and therefore one of the greenest cars on the road. i won't go into further details, but suggest that if any of your 'campaigners' can read, they might want to look up some information about this car before leaving these polluting waste of time leaflets on our vehicles."

Our response: "As I understand it the RX400 hybrid is NOT one of the cleanest cars on the road, and Lexus was recently told off by the ASA for pretending to be green. It may indeed be one of the cleanest 4x4s on the road, emitting at around 190 grams CO2/km, but that still makes it an average polluter.

See the specs from the Lexus website for yourself.

The Toyota Prius gets about 120 gm CO2 / km, whereas an electric car is 0 rated and a large Range Rover emits about 370gm CO2 / km. The average we need to get ALL cars to by 2008 is 140 gms CO2/km, to put this in perspective.

Then there is the pedestrian safety issue. The RX400 doesn't have an official EuroNCAP rating, but it still is a heavy vehicle (heavier in fact with the extra battery weight) so your vehicle is dangerous by it's height, weight and design for children, pedestrians and cyclists.

That should explain why one of your neighbors dared to ticket you. It should also show how consumers are being conned by the advertising hype. RX400's are good for Americans getting off their addiction to monstrosities like Hummers. Think of it as a nicotine patch. But in the UK, where 4x4s aren't so big and stupid, a Lexus RX400H isn't really going to do anything other than make someone feel warm and fuzzy about their big hybrid car with an 'h'.

Stereotypical 4x4 drivers?

We received the following letter from a supporter in Wilmslow, just to illuminate us on the mentality of some 4x4 owners:

"Where exactly in Wilmslow does a driver of a 4x4 need 4-wheel-drive? Whilst negotiating the speed bumps at Sainsbury's? Or mounting the kerb near the primary school so that I have to walk in the road to get past with my little boy walking home from school..Hmmmmm

This kind of arrogant vehicle owner should be shamed into re-thinking their choice of car. No Need!!!

Incidentally, a friend of the family has a BMW X5; they are a couple with no kids, and paid a lot for it, they live in Wilmslow, which fit's the stereotype. Anyway, they actually bragged to everyone that when they park up, they straddle the white lines in the parking bay, thus using up 2 spaces, because "We don't want anyone to "door" us when they park next to us...

I was just dumbstruck and to my eternal shame, did not come back with a damming comment, I had no frame of reference to begin to understand their thinking behind that kinda policy. They actually said it in the same way and with the same internation that you might say something like "Whenever we open a bottle of wine, we always finish it, no point in keeping half a bottle..."

They then went on to say that they had to park like this, because the spaces weren't big enough for a 4x4, obviously it's a conspiricy then!"