Last week I had one of the most stressful weeks of my life when my husband underwent three operations – two of them emergencies.

Bad enough – but adding to my stress was the difficult parking situation around Eastern Road in Brighton.

While I quickly managed to find on-road parking spaces (I didn’t even bother trying to look for spaces in the Royal County Sussex Hospital’s car park), the parking meters don’t accept the new 5p, 10p and 50p coins.

Of course all I had in my purse were the new coins, so as my husband was undergoing a horrifically painful procedure in one specialist section of the hospital, I was desperately accosting passers-by to ask whether they had any for £1 or £2 coins in exchange for my useless smaller change.

But the machine told me to “take back my coins” when I fed them in, forcing me to leave my car un-ticketed and at risk of receiving a parking ticket.

Luckily I didn’t fall victim to a passing traffic warden but I would have fought tooth and nail not to have paid any fine as, willing to pay, I was unable to.

All of this added 15 minutes on to the time it took for me to reach my post-operation husband, shaking with shock and needing me.

Earlier in the week I had taken my son for an appointment with an orthodontist – only to find that the closest ticket machine was pay-by-phone only. At least, that was the announcement on the side of the meter, the side I read as I ran towards it, then stopping short as I realised I didn’t know how to pay by phone. I later discovered, too late, it did also accept money. The next nearest machine was broken, so again I left my car parked un-ticketed.

I know Brighton is over packed with cars, especially in summer, and to control them and make it fair for residents, there have to be rules. But does the council have to make it so difficult, especially near a hospital where some people are bound to be in stressful situations?

It has reduced Eastern Road, most people’s main route to the hospital and also the main route for emergency ambulances, to one lane plus a restricted bus lane by widening the pavements, thus prolonging car journeys to the hospital for people visiting patients or getting themselves to the hospital for an appointment.

I am not unreasonable and I do understand that the areas around the hospital are residential, and also that the hospital’s car park has been extended.

But could someone at the council in charge think about getting all the parking meters in the surrounding streets in good working order and updated to accept new coins? Surely the council raises enough money through ticketing and residential permits to perform this routine task and save stressed people from more stress?

Why can’t parking meters accept money and payment by phone? After all, everyone save the Queen and Simon Cowell carries cash but fewer people, especially older people and the phone-phobic like me, don’t want to faff around wondering how to pay by phone. If you don’t know how to do it, it takes far longer than popping a £1 coin in a slot and waiting a second or two for the ticket to print.

The council prioritises the needs of pedestrians and the users of public transport over car users and in many ways that is right. I come from an East Midlands city where since the 1960s the car has been put first, resulting in Tudor buildings being demolished to create car parks, Victorian buildings disappearing under a hideous busy ring road and an enormous shopping centre complete with car park constructed in the middle of town, thus destroying its remaining older quaint shopping quarter packed with independent, locally owned shops.

But surely there is a happy medium. Surely there is a moment at which a public body’s green ideology should not cruelly ride roughshod over people’s needs in life-or-death circumstances, such as at a hospital.

The rules should be different, to take into account that many people visiting hospitals are in a stressful situation and cannot make rational judgements. It is understandable that such people, faced with an emergency, will choose a mode of transport most convenient to them. They will not think, “Oh, in order to help save the planet, I will not drive to the hospital in my car to get to my ill/dying relative’s hospital bedside because even though it will take only 20 minutes, the council would prefer me to use public transport, which will take me an hour and a half”. And as they set off in the car, their mind is on their relative, not whether they have older 5p, 10p and 50p coins handy to pay for a parking ticket.

Humanity can sometimes become lost in vast public bodies set up to provide services for the very people who pay for it. They make their rules and won’t bend them. This is one circumstance where I heartily hope they might relent, especially after the week I’ve had.