Blinkered parking!

[keithmac]

Don't get me started! The parking outside my youngest son's school is atrocious. Apart from the fact that a large proportion of them drive from within less than half a mile on the same estate, the actual parking is surely the product of a five year old. They crowd to park as close to the gates as possible, parking on the kerb, across driveways, on bends, churning the grass verge into mush in winter. How the nearby home owners cope with it I don't know? If it was me being parked in on my own drive and witnessing people wantonly vandalising the previously neatly manicured grass verge that I had spent the entire summer repairing from the last winter's abuse I think I would be out there with a baseball bat showing them a piece of my mind!
The other infuriating thing they do is selfishly parking across multiple spaces. A parking bay that will easily fit 3 cars lengthways will often have only 2 small cars parked because the owners are parked half a car length from the end of the layby, what's that all about?

We have a 5 minute walk to school with the kids, I've seen a person over the road spend 10/15 minutes de-icing the car to drive round the corner, fight for a space and drive home again..

I was looking at a house to buy on the school road but just couldn't put up with people abandoning their cars across the drive and verges. God knows how they put up with it!.

I spoke to one chap on the front, there was a people carrier parked ON his drive, he couldn't get his car out for work. Needless to say he was livid and rightly so, worst thing was it was my next door neighbour who had abandoned it, lazy barstewards..

 

[Drago]

Stop people in cities from having cars parked on the street freeing up the streets for responsible people who have drives to park when they drive into town to work. Oh, hang on....

Stop them parking on the street for work too, or charge them extra road tax for doing so.

My parking problem is mine - not societies.

 

[Sheffield_Tiger]

We should have laws like Japan. No, not the one that allows the sale of soiled schoolgirls knickers from vending machines, but the one that won't grant you a permit to register, and thus drive, a car until you can prove you've got off road parking. No permit, then you can only have a tiny Kei car.

Well, you USED to be able to rent a council garage but that was when every household didn't have a car, nevermind several. And even since then, garages have been demolished, not built. But society has been structured around car ownership as being necessary for many. And should it be a privilege only afforded to those based upon wealth?

It's still possible to park responsibly, the problem is more one of some people being d***heads

 

[Drago]

It should be a privilege afforded to those who are prepared to behave like sensible adults, and not inflict their vehicle unnecessarily upon society.

Wealth is another matter. Like it or not, we live in a capitalist society where all sorts of nice things are only afforded to those with wealth. Considering the financial, environmental and health cost to society cars are far too cheap to run.

 

[si_c]

Sometimes I wonder why cash strapped councils don't simply employ more parking wardens.

 

[Saluki]

I did have someone once park half on the road and half on the pavement right across the front of my drive, technically still on double yellows. I asked him (and it was a 'him') to please move so that I could get out of my drive. He gave me a mouthful of abuse and called me several names, including the C word, which put my back right up. I told him that if he didn't shift his vehicle I would be moving it for me. He scoffed at me and walked off. After 5 or 6 minutes, he was not back so I opened my big side gates, behind which was my little wee car and calmly, and slowly drove down my drive, into the side of his and simply pushed it out of my way and into the middle of the road. Then I went my merry way into work.
My little wee car might not have been that wee, now I think of it. Although I did have a Smart Car as well as my rather lovely Disco.

Had he moved his car and not called me the C word, I might not have gently moved his car into the middle of the road. Apparently, the good folks at the car sales garage next door told me, he was not happy

We once had someone decided to park in our drive one morning. No idea why. Couldn't see or find them. Same treatment.

 

[captain nemo1701]

We once had someone decided to park in our drive one morning. No idea why. Couldn't see or find them. Same treatment.
I once opened my curtains to see a lady parking in my drive. I was about to open the front door and politely ask what she was doing when my neighbour came out and said she had the wrong drive. She reversed out and parked on the road nearby. Innocent mistake, I suppose.

 

[captain nemo1701]

This photo is basically suburban Britain summed up.

I was once in a local shop that had long parking area in front of it. It was big enough for an aircraft carrier. If you parked in it, you would be about...oooh..3m away from a shop door. You only have to walk over a pavement. Imagine my surprise one time when emerging from the shop, I saw a car driving down the pavement so that the driver was directly opposite the shop door, about 1m away. Some people are just so fe**ing lazy....

 

[Drago]

Form some reason they won't park in my driveway.

 

[Lonestar]

Stop people in cities from having cars <snip>

FTFY.

 

[smutchin]

But society has been structured around car ownership as being necessary for many.

That's a chicken/egg thing, isn't it? People have got used to private car ownership (largely thanks to the cost of car ownership being made artificially cheap) and so have come to expect it as a right. At the same time, public transport has been degraded.

And should it be a privilege only afforded to those based upon wealth?

If people had to pay the true cost of car ownership, very few would be able to afford it.

You might also ask is it fair that those who don't own cars are expected to effectively subsidise car ownership for those who do?

Something really does need to be done about the blight of cars on our society. The current situation is unsustainable in the long run.

 

[captain nemo1701]

Further to my earlier post, here's the shops with said parking bay and the red line shows the route that the driver took. I should add that he was neither elderly or disabled, just really, really lazy in saving himself about 2m of walking!.

 

[si_c]

Further to my earlier post, here's the shops with said parking bay and the red line shows the route that the driver took. I should add that he was neither elderly or disabled, just really, really lazy in saving himself about 2m of walking!

Some people are just asking to have their tyres let down.

 

[Drago]

Good grief, looks a bit rough there.

 

[Sheffield_Tiger]

That's a chicken/egg thing, isn't it? People have got used to private car ownership (largely thanks to the cost of car ownership being made artificially cheap) and so have come to expect it as a right. At the same time, public transport has been degraded.



If people had to pay the true cost of car ownership, very few would be able to afford it.

You might also ask is it fair that those who don't own cars are expected to effectively subsidise car ownership for those who do?

Something really does need to be done about the blight of cars on our society. The current situation is unsustainable in the long run.

I agree.

Point is you can't just "ban cars", there have to be a lot more changes including reworking public transport...and there would be a lot of very difficult and powerful opposition

Ideally we would go back to the days when buses were regular, affordable and not packed so full by half way into town that the first bus drives straight past your stop already full to capacity. That cars weren't banned but no family needed (or thought that they needed) more than one. Growing up, our car was kept in a rented garage and was used occasionally. Never for grocery shopping and was sometimes taken for a few miles drive just to give it a run. And certainly never to drop me off at school...back then a parent dropping you off would have been the height of shame, even worse than accidentally calling the teacher "mum". We shopped at a "supermarket" that seemed huge but would look laughably tiny now - and it didn't have a car park.

I can't see the likes of The Lord Sainsbury ever voting in favour of smaller independent supermarkets that don't have a car park though....and whilst they and the retail parks keep springing up in locations ill-served by public transport, my point is it's unfair to single the less affluent car owner out to beat.

But people also have to get out of the habit. I was in the habit..I used to drive the 1/2 mile to the local shop once. Suggesting people wheel a shopping trolley back from a local supermarket (or on a bus as we did when Tesco first opened out of town) now would be viewed as some kind of extreme trial - which of course it's not.