Rude parking people

For my expanding line of rude people posts, we come to people who park rudely.

There's two forms of doing this - the unmindful or oblivious way, and the deliberate way.

The unmindful way is a person completely oblivious to the existence of other people, and parks in the way that requires the least amount of effort on their part. They will often be a few inches over the line, making it difficult for you to park in the spot next to them.

The unmindful parker isn’t doing this intentionally to keep you away from their car. In fact, this kind of parking actually increases your chance of someone door-dinging you on accident or on purpose. They are doing this because they can’t be bothered to think about how their performance of the job of parking their car is going to affect another person. You and I don’t exist in their eyes. Why should they bother to park carefully?

The deliberate way is the way Mr. Corvette does in the pictures here. He (I’m assuming it’s a he) wants you to know that ye doesn’t want you near his car. He’s taking two spaces, because he (and his car) are as important as two other people (and their cars), and you aren’t allowed to park close enough to his car to accidentally ding his doors.



I can respect that someone wants to keep their car in as perfect condition as possible, but I don’t think that parking directly between two spots (or even four, like I’ve seen elsewhere) is appropriate.

Now, in Mr. Corvette’s defense, the parking lot was not especially crowded, and he did not do this within the first 5 or 8 parking spots from the door. However, I don’t think that there’s a “right” time to park rudely and a “wrong” time to park rudely.

If you want to keep your car from suffering door dings and other calamity, I offer this advice:

• Park as far away from other cars as is reasonable. The extra walk to your destination will only be good for your health. (If you’re parking in handicapped zones, ignore this advice…)
• Park next to an island. This way only one car can park next to you, instead of one car on either side of you.
• Park close to the island, so that you give as much room on the other side as possible.
• Park so that the island is on your right. This way a car can only park to your left. The door facing your car will only open if there is a passenger. This drastically decreases the chance that a door facing your car will open.
• Park so that your car is visible to the public, employees of wherever you are, the street. This reduces the chance of someone breaking in to your car.

In short, there are ways to park wisely and politely simultaneously. Please exercise them.