Be nice to clampers

REARVIEW:THERE'S BEEN much talk recently of clamping down, for want of a better term, on rogue clampers. Justifiably so. Many are ruthless vultures preying on easy targets. But what of the legitimate ones? Do they deserve the opprobrium heaped upon their cowboy colleagues?

Of course not. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get it.

I was clamped last week. My own fault, entirely. Returning after an absence of several years to a favourite meter-free enclave in Dublin city centre, I didn’t bother checking the signs before parking. Assumption is a dangerous thing.

Arriving back hours later, I was greeted by the yellow jaws of doom enveloping my wheel. Worse still, I was roundly scoffed at by a clump of taxi drivers gleefully pointing out the freshly-erected signs showing my secret oasis had been turned into a rank.

After I phoned in a payment of €80, a pair of clampers arrived to free me. One approached with the trepidation of a farmer checking on a wounded bull.

His face contorted into confusion as I greeted him with a cheery wave and an admission of my stupidity. To confuse him even further, I motioned to him as he drove off that he had forgotten to switch on his van’s headlights. Poor man nearly crashed.

His reaction saddened me. He had evidently been conditioned by past experience to expect the worst. Abuse, threats, even violence. And him just a bloke doing his best to make ends meet.

So a plea to all motorists. Be nice to legitimate clampers, for they are entitled to our support and respect.

They provide a valuable service to society by keeping roads clear, nabbing moral midgets who park illegally in disabled spaces and teaching idiots like me valuable lessons about making assumptions.

But most importantly of all, they give miserable taxi drivers something to smile about.