My apartment in Kansas City is on a shady, tree-lined street. And being lined with apartment (duplexes actually) we get a bunch of people who don’t live in one place long. And apparently, their friends are absolute shitheads.
I was walking home from the store at 9:30 PM. Walking down the sidewalk, nice and legal, and one of the transient renters is having their usual Friday night party. There are two cars in their driveway, and no cars on the street in front of the duplex. And this one asshole pulls in behind the other two cars blocking the sidewalk completely. The center pillar of his 4 door sedan is right in the middle of the motherfucking sidewalk! I have the choice of either walking onto the yard to walk in from of this pus-sucker’s car, or behind it into the street! I ask them to move it, to park on the street (which is, as I said, completely open). As is typical for those with more testosterone than brains, he says “Who are you, the sidewalk police?” I reply that, no, I’m just someone who walks down this sidewalk. His moronic girlfriend says “Oh, we’ll only be here for 15 minutes!” as if that makes it OK. The other people on this street are any number of little old ladies with walkers, who would be very fucking inconvenienced.
They reinforced my view of them as idiots by bringing a small, yappy dog, who ran after me, no leash in sight. And, for some reason this street has a lot of other assholes who insist on traveling down this 20 mph street at 40. Small yappy dog could become dog jerky very easily.
This happens all the fucking time at this particular address. And again, there was space for two cars to be legally parked in front of this house. No hydrants, 4 houses away from the corner. Just an asshole and his asshole guests. I want to mail asshole the traffic laws that apply to blocking the sidewalk in Kansas City, MO.
Call the cops, or the city. In most places, parking with your car obstructing the sidewalk is a violation.
I found this out to my cost in San Francisco a few months ago. We were visiting my mother-in-law and, as usual, i parked in her driveway outside her garage. There was room for people to get by, but part of my car was clearly on the sidewalk. I parked like this because, in the 6+ years i’ve been visiting her with my wife, almost every single person in their neighborhood has a car parked in the driveway like this.
The next morning, i came out to find a $100 ticket for obstructing the sidewalk. For the next ten days of our visit, i parked in the street or across her driveway (rather than in it). During that whole time, almost every house on the street had a car parked partially obstructing the sidewalk, and not one of them got a ticket. Go figure.
FTR, this law is enforced very selectively in our fair city. Every third house on our block routinely blocks the sidewalk completely by parking in their driveway, and I have yet to see anyone get a ticket. Other people park parallel to the street but on the sidewalk. Still others store their cars on the street under canvas covers and never move them, even for street cleaning, and never get a ticket. My partner believes that this is becomes someone with influence with the Department of Parking and Traffic lives on this block. If I ever find out who it is, I am going to blow the whistle so hard my guts will be flying out my ears (figuratively speaking, I suppose).
Roddy
Leave a note on the windscreen, saying “I tried to help my friend manoeuvre her wheelchair past your car, but there was not room to pass without badly scraping your paintwork”
A full sized, 4-door American sedan is more than 16 feet in length. This asswipe parked completely blocking the motherfucking sidewalk PLUS almost seven feet on each side of the sidewalk! That is some really astonishing ignorant and selfish behavior, coupled with the fact that there was enough space for two cars RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE!
Why would he do this?
[ol]
[li]He blocked the sidewalk to save his own lazy ass ten feet of walking. [/li][li]He was too chickenshit to open his door on the street - the same street he forced pedestrians into.[/li][li]He had no idea that anyone would walk on the sidewalk, thus he is far too stupid to be allowed a license.[/li][li]He’s just an inconsiderate scumbag.[/li][/ol]
I’m gonna have to go with #4, but the others seem equally valid.
This kind of crap annoys me too. Generally, I walk around the car, on the lawn side, looking for a flowerbed to step in.
I have on one occasion complained to a business that did the same thing. It was a bit worse than this example because you had to step into very heavy traffic to get around it. It would have been impassable with a wheel chair. They quit parking cars there for a few days.
At least it was parked. I often run into this situation with people trying to exit parking garages. They’ll completely block the sidewalk, while looking for an opening to gun it out into traffic. They never see me approaching from the right, as all their attention is focused to the left, looking for an opening. No fucking way I’ll step out into the street in front of them. This means that I have to walk part way into the parking garage to get around them, and hope to hell that they don’t decide to back up.
Instead of walking around the car you could balance some nails in front of the tire with those grabbers old people use. That’ll keep your hand safe and the nails will wedge themselves in to give a nice slow leak so you won’t be around to be blamed.