Drivers fail to stay within parking space
From my desk at home I can see Locust Street in my peripheral vision through the glass door to my balcony. As I see movement on the street I’ll glance over that direction. More often than not when someone parks at the on-street metered space they fail to keep their car behind the parking meter.
When you parallel park sometimes you have no choice but to be off a bit based on the cars in front of and behind your own. But this space I see off to my left is the one space between our drive and the next corner.  Everyone just pulls front-forward into this space. And yet most don’t get it right.
Some cities, such as Clayton, mark on the pavement the allotted space where you are to park.
You can sorta see the parking meter in the above picture.
From the sidewalk you see this driver had nothing to prevent parking properly.
And yet the driver missed it by a long shot. OK, you are right, in this location it doesn’t matter because the city foolishly has too few spaces. At 11am early in the week there are not many cars around. The commercial spaces on the 1st floors are vacant at the moment and on the weekends the street is full, especially if a neighbor is having a party.
This bad habit, repeated daily, makes me wonder if drivers need those pavement markings on the street in order to park properly? But I also think drivers are better at parking naturally. If we had a “pay-n-display” parking system, where the parking space length isn’t pre-determined by the meter spacing, our drivers would do a better job of parking.
In the meantime I’ll just try to resist the urge to leave these drivers a note saying, “Align the meter with the front of the car, not the side mirror.”
- Steve Patterson
