Drove past a roadside census on the drive home this evening. They had a taxi-rank-style lane set up to the side of the road, and were pulling over (presumably a random sample of) cars into it, so people in natty flourescent-yellow jackets could ask questions.
Despite my best Jedi-mind-trick efforts to will them to me, I wasn’t chosen, and so didn’t get to find out what they were asking about. (Actually, I was even sadder than that – got to the roundabout at the end of the road and went back past them for another try… And still they ignored me! :-))
I’ve never heard of roadside censuses (shouldn’t it be censi? ;-)) before. In fact, if it wasn’t for the big ‘CENSUS’ police sign before the queue of cars, and the fact that the stylish guys in yellow had ‘CENSUS’ on their backs, I wouldn’t even have recognised what is was all about.
I tried googling for it when I got home to find out more, but either google is useless, I’m useless with google, or there isn’t a lot of info about roadside census on the web. All I could find was a Daily Mail article whinging about a long tailback caused by a census last July. I’m curious to find out more though – the National Statistics website doesn’t seem to mention it as an activity… so I dunno who does it. Will have to have a better look at some point…
I saw a similar thing last week, and wondered if I could refuse to join. – It was manned by a load of police (about 15!).
If you are late for an appointment do you have to join in? I was interested in the powers they have – a bit like ‘Stop and Quiz’?
I was stopped today! They want to know,
Where you came from
Where your going
How many cars you have at home
And in my case what company do I work for.
Failing to comply and pulling over results in a failure to stop for the police and could land you in court!