When You’re Not Allowed to Leave: A Parking App, a University Campus, and the Discovery of Applied Law

 

Yesterday, as part of my law degree, I had to attend a session at a different campus of the University of South Wales. It’s a campus I will attend exactly twice across the entire degree, solely to use a specialist Hydra suit facility, a top-of-the-range, real-time simulated IT rooms used for tort law.

High-tech. Sophisticated. Very expensive.

What I wasn’t expecting was that the most intense practical lesson of the day wouldn’t come from the Hydra suit at all but from the car park.

The last time I attended this campus, parking required a £1 payment at a machine to exit. It's already annoying. There was no signage at the entrance, no warning before you were parked, and no alternative once you were on site. Still, I paid, left, and filed it away as “one of those things”.

This time, the machine was gone.

Instead, I was told that payment was now only possible via a third-party app called Trust.

To leave the car park, I was required to:

• download the app
  
  

• create an account
  
  

• provide personal data
  
  

• approve a banking transaction
  
  

There was no alternative method of exit.

I assumed naively, it turns out that the person on the other side of the speaker would be reasonable.

I explained calmly that I couldn’t authorise the payment. My banking app is on a different phone, which I didn’t have with me. I also explained something far more important: I needed to leave to collect my son from school. Last time, I paid at a machine. I expected the same basic option.

I am busy. Like most parents, my day runs on logistics, timing, and contingency plans. I don’t have the luxury of being delayed by an app failure, poor signal, or a system that assumes everyone has the same digital access at all times.

Despite this, I was told that unless I paid, I could not leave.

Eventually, after repeated explanations and visible distress, I was allowed out but only after my personal details were taken. I was then informed that I was “banned” from returning unless payment was made.

Let that sink in.

On a university campus, I was:

• prevented from leaving
  
  

• pressured to hand over personal data
  
  

• threatened with future exclusion
  
  

• placed under stress while trying to reach my child
  
  

All over £1.

This isn’t a complaint about paying for parking. It’s about choice, consent, and safety.

And this is where I started thinking about physics.

Science students learn the difference between theoretical physics and applied physics, how ideas behave when they meet the real world. Yesterday, I realised I was being given my own lesson in applied law.

At no point did I agree to a contract. There was no clear signage at the entrance. No warning that exit would be conditional on an app. No reasonable alternative once parked. No option for cash, card, or staff override without humiliation and pressure.

As a law student, I can’t ignore the irony: a system operating on implied consent, enforced through physical restriction, extracting data under duress.

But as a parent and particularly the parent of a disabled child, something else troubles me far more.

What If There Had Been an Emergency?

What if my phone battery had died?
What if the app crashed?
What if I didn’t have a smartphone at all?
What if I didn’t speak English confidently?
What if there had been a medical emergency?
What if my son needed me urgently?

A system that can delay or prevent people from leaving a space is not a minor inconvenience. It is a safeguarding risk.

Universities are not shopping centres. Students are not captive consumers. Campuses are supposed to be places of learning, accessibility, and care, not environments where people feel trapped, coerced, or frightened by administrative systems outsourced to third parties. Especially when student fees are high and the car park itself is, frankly, not in the best condition.

So I have a plan.

I am going to apply the law.

I don’t want anyone else, student, staff member, visitor, or parent to experience that moment of panic when you realise you can’t just leave without surrendering personal data under pressure.

My applied law letter will look at contract formation, consent, consideration, and duress. It will look at power imbalance, data extraction, and accessibility. And yes, it will also look at how it feels to be a woman on her own, speaking to a man through a speaker, trying to get home to her child.

Accessibility isn’t only about ramps and lifts. It’s about systems that recognise real lives, real responsibilities, and real emergencies.

And if you’re going to train law students in a top-of-the-range simulated IT rooms, you should probably be prepared for them to use the law when your own systems don’t comply with it.

Applied law.

Yesterday, I did leave the campus. They did let me go.

But I was flustered, hot, and angry. I shouldn’t have had to argue, explain my child’s disability, or hand over personal data just to do so.

That shouldn’t be the price of education.