'I was driven insane and off the road by confusing car parking apps'

"Is this all part of the big anti-car conspiracy?" I asked myself as I encountered yet another complex and confusing parking pay station in Manchester city centre. My smartphone at the time was on its last legs and the last thing I needed was to be told I needed to download yet another app to avoid a parking fine.

Yet that is what our increasingly automated, technology-driven world seems to be doing - psychologically bludgeoning us all into becoming tech-savvy enough so we can actually park our evil, gas-guzzling, and thus polluting, chunks of metal legally without incurring a punitive charge.

It's experiences like this that guilt-tripped me into upgrading to the latest iPhone, so frightened was I of being labelled a parking app dunce. But I am not alone. I took a walk around Manchester this week, particularly the Northern Quarter via Piccadilly, and observed a number of motorists scratching their heads, confused about how to pay for their parking.

READ MORE:The best and cheapest places to park in Manchester city centre

Of course, the car parking companies want us to pay with a cashless option. This is evidenced by the rapidly diminishing number of machines you can actually insert coins into.

I worry about what an elderly person who has never owned - and never wants to own - a smartphone is eventually going to do, when the more straightforward options are gone. For this exercise, I parked on the NCP car park at Chorlton Street, although I did consider travelling into the city centre on the train, to avoid the whole parking trauma (maybe that's the whole point of all these different parking apps - to drive us off the road as well as insane). Be warned, you have to remember your registration number so you can return