I rented a Vauxhall Vivaro van from ZipCar to help my daughter and her housemate move from Bermondsey to a new rental in Stepney, I don’t live locally and my only previous experience of driving in that area was when I helped my daughter move into her Bermondsey flat. On our first trip between Bermondsey and Stepney my daughter directed me and we went towards the Rotherhithe tunnel, when we arrived at the tunnel approach road I saw all the signs and the heavy duty metal height restriction so we stopped and my daughter started to google the dimensions of our van, whilst she was doing that I saw a transit van with a roof rack and ladders approaching the height restriction and slowly passing underneath it and down into the tunnel - so we moved on and down the tunnel approach. On the return journey we approached the tunnel and obviously the same restriction signs are there but even if I did see the weight restriction sign I wouldn’t have registered that it applied to our van as I (naively) would have put our weight between 1 and 1.5 T and certainly wouldn’t have any idea what the MGW of the vehicle was just as I suspect most car drivers have no idea how much their car weighs.
I was completely oblivious to having committed the violation until I mentioned the trip to a colleague at work who lives in South London and he said he thought you couldn’t take vans through the Rotherhithe, needless to say after a bit of googling it became obvious I had f**ked up.
I don’t deny that the signs were there and just because I saw two or three other vans in the tunnel during my journeys through it that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have followed without doing more checks, but looking at the weight restriction versus the average van and pick up MGW a sign that read ‘NO HGVs, NO VANS, NO PICK UPS’ would be much easier to process in the two or three seconds you have when you arrive at the entrance, both the North and South entrances are a sensory overload of signs, barriers and three lanes of traffic merging into one so the drivers focus is all over the place. Given the fairly consistent monthly levels (6000 -8000 PCNs) for the same contravention there must be some ambiguity as surely not many of those can be repeat offenders.
This is a long rambling explanation to what really is a very simple question – I was quite clearly in the tunnel with a van that contravenes the restriction but given the unusually low weight restriction which all but the smallest ‘car vans’ will fall foul of, the fact that the I was driving a vehicle that I don’t regularly drive from a hire company who don’t put any of the vehicle dimensions or weights in the vehicle data on their app - is being fined £160 for two journeys plus two £30 admin fees excessive given the lack of ‘simple’ signage on the tunnel approaches so is there any point in challenging one of the PCNs to reduce the costs? This could all be academic anyway as it looks like ZipCar may have paid already if I’ve understood their email correctly.
I have scans of the PCNs which ZipCar have emailed me but it seemed pointless sending them unless someone thinks an appeal is worthwhile.

