DEFENSIVE PARKING – A RANT (NO APOLOGIES)

I drive a mid-sized sedan, not too big, not so small. It looks good, drives well, gets great mileage and has all the bells and whistles I like. In the past few yeas the percentage of sedans produced has diminished; far more trucks and SUVs are sold.

If you look at any parking lot, you will see the results of that trend. Look closely and you will notice that there are sedans and small cars interspersed. These sedans and small cars are often completely surrounded by SUVs in spaces known as SUV Canyons.

If you observe for a few more minutes, you will notice SUVs and trucks barreling down the aisles of those parking lots. Until recently, barreling SUVS were seen primarily in the parking lots of home improvement stores. But now the phenomenon has spread and can be found everywhere, including grocery store parking lots.

Earlier this week, I went to my local grocery store. In order to avoid parking in an SUV Canyon, I have developed two parking strategies for what I call Defensive Parking. If the parking lot is not particularly crowded, I park next to the grocery cart return area, or next to a tree at the end of one of the aisles. This insures my car will not be blocked on three sides by large vehicles, increasing the probability I will be able to back out without being creamed by an on-coming SUV. If the parking lot is crowded, I search for a place where I can park facing out. Even if you find yourself embedded in an SUV Canyon, when you face out, you can usually maneuver out of the space and avoid being creamed if you move slowly.

On this particular visit, the parking lot was not very crowded, so I adopted the first strategy and parked next to a tree. There were two vacant spaces to my left. When I came back, the two spaces were still vacant. I got in, started the car, put it in reverse and looked back. A large, gray SUV pulled in behind me. I waited for the vehicle to pass, but the driver began a Y turn. i was blocked in. The driver then backed into the space next to me on the left.

The driver gave me a big smile, then opened the driver’s side door and squeezed out of the SUV. I rolled my window down and said “Your car is blocking my view.”

She replied, “Of course it is. My car is bigger than yours. This is a public parking lot and I can park wherever I want.” She turned and flounced off.

Rather than pointing out that it was not a public lot, but a lot owned by the store, I called out in my best “school-marm” voice, “You are a very impolite person!”

Silly though this exchange was, for some reason, I could not let it go. She was thoughtless. She could have waited the additional ten seconds it would have taken me to back out of the parking space before she jammed her over-sized vehicle into the too-small space. But she didn’t. She did it Because She Could.

This driver is certainly not the only one who embraces the maxim, “Do It Because You Can.” Maybe a good part of our current public discontent is the prevalence of the belief that you should be able to do whatever you wish, because you can. Maybe it would be a better place to live if we remember that “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Peace