No, no, no… I’m with ya. But you know how most driveways have the curb cut, and then a foot of red curb, maybe with a line extending across the parking space? If people park into the red a bit, as long as I can get out, I’m cool with that. If every strip of red curb were enforced to the inch, we’d all be parking in Daly City. But yeah, if I can’t get my car out without a protractor, fuck 'em.
I say lenient because I’ve seen Pit threads here where the OP was bitching that someone had the gall to <i>park in front of their house</i>. I wanted to drag that poster to Noe Valley and leave 'em there.
It reminds me of when I was growing up in Northern Jersey, and my elementary school was literally 300 yards away. At first, when I was a kid, it wasn’t so bad, but I remember in high school that I couldn’t park my pickup truck in my own driveway because some soccer-mom had parked and blocked half of it. Whattapainintheass. Too bad I didn’t have a four-wheel drive. I would have towed them myself.
But then again, I learned one thing: If I ever have kids, I’m taking them to school in the back of my truck. I’ll teach 'em to leap out of the bed and hit the schoolyard like Marines storming out of an APC. It’ll get 'em out quick, get 'em rolling, and I’ll be rolling in moments.
I live down the street from a school, and I try never to be around when drop-offs and pick ups are happening. One morning I go into my garage, get into my car and start it. I look behind me before backing up, and there is suddenly a car blocking me. I honk and a man gets out of the car and says something that I can’t hear. He then leaves and either doesn’t hear me or ignores me, walks his child all the way into the school yard and apparently waits a few minutes, comes back and says" I asked you if you were getting out" The door is open, the car is running - WTF did he think I was doing"
Another time, it was a double parker- car double parks to pick up children. Another parent returns to her legally parked car , but she can’t get out. She’s frantic, because she has to get to another school to pick up, and she starts honking constantly. My nearly deaf next door neighbor doesn’t hear well enough to know what’s going on, but does hear well enough to scream about the honking. I go over to the car, and there is an adult woman siting there who can’t or won’t move it. I wait for the driver to return, and politely tell him if he must double park in the future, to please send the non-driver to pick up the kids so that the car can be moved. He started yelling at me , and looked like he was going to take a swing at me. I kind of wished he had hit me, but apparently he noticed my gun or my handcuffs and backed down.
After reading this thread I wish I had a house next to a school, like the next lot over. It’d give me pleasure to no end to tow these pretentious soccer moms 2-3 times a day.
If I lived in such a neighborhood, I might be inclined to pull out the ol’ welder one saturday afternoon and build myself a “boot.” Should be pretty easy if you just build it to surround one wheel while covering the lug nuts with a plate.
I’m also curious about the legality of simply moving someone’s car if it was illegally parked on your property. What would happen if you just picked the car up and moved it over a block (more of a hassle than having it towed, since they won’t know where it went for a while)? How about if you put an impenetrable gate across your driveway, locking the car inside? Or built a giant crate around it (hey, I needed somewhere to put my crate, and it was my damn driveway!)? Or rolled it inside your garage and closed the door? All sorts of obnoxious ideas come to mind.
How about a sign that says, “Car Donation Area: parking your car here indicates your intent to donate it as a prop in my sledge-hammer performance art piece entitled, ‘No [Parking] Means No [Parking]’”
Is there any end to accomodating assholes? Some might argue you just encourage people to behave like morons when you give them whatever they want just to avoid trouble.
I’ve long thought a great parking ordinance would be that if a car is parked in a place where it’s illegal to be parked, and a moving vehicle collides with it, the driver and the owner of the parked car are equally at fault.
Having 50% of the liability would be enough to discourage drivers from plowing into illegally parked cars wherever they found then, but I bet it would cut down substantially on illegal parking.
This touches on what confuses me about this whole “kids to school” thing. Why can’t the parents just drive up to the school, kick the kids out the door, and keep going?
Although the following doesn’t involve parking per se, I think it is in the general spirit of the thread.
Once upon a time I lived in Chicago, land of snow and ice.
During that particular winter the city received a record snowfall.
As a result, all the streets in my little neighborhood effectively became one way because of the huge banks of snow on each side.
If you encountered another vehicle while driving, the rule of thumb was that whoever was furthest along the street had the right of way.
I was 3/4’s of the way down my side street one evening when a behemoth luxury car turned on it
The driver drove right up to my bumper and began gesturing wildly that I should back up.
Instead, I locked my doors, turned on my dome light, lit a cigarette and began reading the newspaper.
I refused to acknowledge his horn or his flashing headlights - I deliberately never looked up from my paper.
Took about 5 minutes but he eventually did back up-still honking and swearing.
200 yards, hell. I’ve seen people block traffic waiting for a spot when there were open ones less than 50 feet away. I went around one of those morons one day and was inside the store before the lazy-ass was even parked. :rolleyes:
Miller:Or just pull out of the spot, wait for the guy to go to work, and then just park there again after he’s gone. How fucking hard is that? How much more time did she waste being a piss-poor example to her kids, instead of acting like a reasonable, accomodating human being?
Marley23:Is there any end to accomodating assholes? Some might argue you just encourage people to behave like morons when you give them whatever they want just to avoid trouble.
Um, Marley, I think Miller was suggesting that it was the asshole driveway-blocker who should have been accomodating. Not the OP who insisted that the asshole driveway-blocker immediately stop blocking his driveway.
See, the AHD-B was bitching that she didn’t want to stop blocking the OP’s driveway because there was nowhere else to park. But if she had just pulled into the street for the few seconds it took the OP to get out of his driveway, she could then have moved right back into the same driveway-blocking spot, this time without being in anybody’s way.
Yes, the OP could also have been saintly about it and waited in his driveway for the “five minutes” while the AHD-B took her kids to the school. That’s another solution. But I agree with you that to some extent it’s just enabling asshole behavior, and I don’t think it’s what Miller was recommending.
Now, I love that idea! Heck, have a half-dozen of these signs posted all around your driveway area. And a prominent hook on the side of the garage with a sledge hammer hanging from it. A well-used looking sledge hammer.
And just when did this driving kids to school thing start?
I always thought you walked or rode your bike if you lived close enough or took the bus if you lived too far away. Has this changed? Have school budgets cut back on bus service? Or are the brats too good for the bus or too lazy to walk?
Worked with a set of twins in the survey business for a bit. They were nice guys but sorta old fashioned on some things. Like cussing in front of their wives.
Anywho, one of them was at the mall and he and his wife had just returned to his work truck, ( Big Honkin 4X4 with a bit of lift and brush guards, winches and stuff and such. )
Cool Dude pulls up in front of them, In his brand new Trans AM™ )hops out to talk to a guy in another car parked nearby. So He taps the horn and indicates he want to leave. Cool dude just ignores him.
So he get out and asks him to move, politely. Cool dude starts cussing and says he will move when he is ready with much profanity. Survey guy asks him to not cuss in front of his wife. This causes cool dude to just get worse.
So survey guy just gets back in his truck and fires it up and drives across the Tans AM™. Then stops and waits for the cops.
Then there is the trial. The witness tell the tale. The cool dude ate the brand new car, the lawyer fees and court costs.
Survey guy goes home and cool dude cries. His insurance also stiffed him.
Sometimes there is justice. ( Which has nothing to do with law )
While I agree the woman was an asshat, I think Obsidian has an issue with the school for not providing adequate parking/drop-off/pick-up areas for the children. All of my kids’ schools had large ovals on the property, not the street, for dropping off and picking up children.
Maybe you and your neighbors could file a complaint with the school principal or the school board?
