My wife's getting arsey about having anything there - says she doesn't want to be held responsible if someone crashes their vehicle into the blocks...
TBH I wouldn't be fussed if the road were widened a bit there.
I sometimes wonder why I bother. I let the corner grow wild, the mystery of what potentially car-damaging objects might be lurking in the grass seems to have a discouraging effect. Alas, the powers-that-be demand the verge look vaguely tidy near the driveway.
They're there to stop cars driving on the verge, which in winter churns it out into a rutted mess and generally gets mud all over the road. The reason is primarily drivers coming down the hill being unable to wait several seconds for the car coming up the hill and then forcing them to squeeze by one another as they discover at this point that the road isn't quite wide enough for two modern cars. Actually, it's obviously going to be a squeeze, but drivers. On occasion, I'll see two of them facing off halfway up the hill, it's a case of when halfwits attack. They might have been sitting there for hours. One did it to my taxi once, my driver turned around at the top of the hill to come down to let me out at the bottom of my driveway, so instead of waiting the entire 10 or 15 seconds it would take me to get my case out of the car, the other driver drove up the hill and stopped right in front of us and hit the horn. Happened that my driver that day is a former commando and ex- of the 'security industry' and isn't the sort of bloke you'd pick a fight with.
We used to have smaller (and rounder) bollards, we once had a pizza delivery car stuck on top of one (handbrakes have a use, especially on a 25% hill) which I presume meant no one else got a pizza that night as all the delivery drivers turned to literally man-handle the car off the bollard, which took about an hour. That and the tendency for mischievous schoolchildren and drunkards (often the same) to uproot them and roll them down the hill.
Anyway, it seems the council are going to fix the bollard this time (evidently they've realised I stiff them on the bills). Be interesting how long that takes, and as it's council contractors, they'll have to redo three times (five times for dropped kerbs). Then they'll probably bill the council ten times as much as I would dare. What I do like about the council is the entire declaim responsibility and blame Biffa. Yes, but they're
your contractor. It's for you to ensure they're operating appropriate vehicles and doing so safely.
