Those have to park somewhere and can’t do so legally due to size and permissible gross weight. I usually get out of my way to report incorrectly parked SUVs, BMWs, Audis and such (we have a nice app from an indie dev for that in Poland). I’ve been averaging a dozen or so towed or wheel locked cars per week based on responses from city guard. I’ll keep on doing this until those fuckers learn to stay away from our cities.
Not all heroes wear capes.
You’re doing good work there, keep it up 😉
Credit goes to the guy that made the app, it’s so effortless. It’s also published into a public database. Got one just now: https://uprzejmiedonosze.net/ud-OOWN3OESyFTn.html
Wait, your police is acting on those reports? Any hints on how to manage that?
Depends entirely on willingness to cooperate so it differs from place to place. My city guard will not fine driver unless they come and confirm offence in person but I’m sending so many reports that I have a fairly high success rate. I also asked nicely to respond to my emails with separate case numbers for each offence so that I can track them.
Genuinely curious because I have no clue: what’s wrong with BMWs and Audis?
BMW and Audi are like the poor man’s Porsche. They are often owned by pretentious, self absorbed arseholes who don’t know how to drive, or couldn’t care less about endangering other road users.
The worst and most reckless drivers here drive German cars. They are guilty of much more than parking badly but it’s the only thing I can be consistently successful with and I treat it as a form of taxing them.
You can stop reading here or you can read my tirades below if you’re interested what’s wrong with those drivers specifically. Here’s machine translated meme that summarises current state of polish roads:
While some would assume my beef with cars was because I prefer public transport, I also do ~15k kilometres yearly on average in my trusty Citroen C3 Picasso and had plenty of opportunities to determine enough is enough, through many near-death experiences among other things.
I have not seen a single good driver in BMW or Audi. There’s also Skoda (Octavia specifically), sports, muscle and cabriolet cars. With Mercedes it depends on the size. Those are the people who go through the life while making way by elbowing everyone else. Lawyers, judges, doctors (they are unimaginably wealthy in Poland), businessmen, celebrities, politicians and their spoiled children. Thugs, OF girls, influencers. Some would say liberal elites but I’d say those are our new feudal lords for reasons that would require even more tirades about regressive tax system and broken property market.
Their disregard for everyone else shows in the way they drive and they’re protected by the ruling class no matter who’s in charge.
We have barely any speed controls and police promotes apps that alert drivers to those controls specifically. We have street races daily in every city. Tuned motorcycles roar through major city arteries at 200km/h with covered plates. If they get caught? Surprise, no drivers license (so no penalty points lol) or the the guy was already barred from driving (you can be barred from driving multiple times with no jail). No valid technical inspection but car won’t be confiscated, just €300 fine which is nothing to them. Alcohol or drugs? Nothing a good lawyer won’t solve. If you kill someone but are a celebrity then the judge will find some bullshit reason to absolve you. If you are wealthy enough police will delay proceeding so that they can run away to Saudi Arabia or Uruguay.
Yeah, I’m furious just thinking about all of this. My city guard being somewhat responsive is the only thing that stops me from resorting to violence. Or restarting to minor violence more often.
Parking spaces in the Netherlands do not easily accommodate these child-killing machines. So, they often end up clumsily parked over multiple spaces or blocking sidewalks. I have taken to submitting complaints to my municipality every time I see this happen.
It is not much but I am doing my little part. I did notice that one of these abominations has gone absent from my neighbourhood. I like to think my complaints have contributed to thisHave you gotten any traction on this with the police or municipality?
I’ve seen a lot of these huge American trucks parked like assholes and I’m seeing more and more custom lifted trucks. The other day I was riding my bicycle from work and saw this huge custom lifted thing. It was as wide as a bus and generally enormous. It was going 60kph in a 30 zone. Then proceeded to jump the kerb, drive across the bicycle path and park on the sidewalk in front of a restaurant. Four douchebags in suits stepped out.
I was shocked and didn’t really know what to do. I thought about taking a picture, but was worried such characters could be organized crime. I thought about calling the police, but frankly I don’t think they would take it seriously. So I just went home bummed out about the state of the world.
With the municipality I think I did. I use the relevant web portal to report the hindrances. I make sure to include photos.
Never tried contacting the police directly
Even in the States where spaces are generally big enough to accommodate these things they still block sidewalks and park across multiple spaces. People who drive these stupid things are just arseholes
These things need to be outlawed.
Sounds like a regulatable problem.
There’s one of these pricks nearby my house. We have these tiny narrow roads and this prick is taking up 30% of it with their giant truck. Why? I have never seen them put anything in it. Right now the through road is blocked and you have to turn around awkwardly… Bet they regret that thing now.
We need Paris-Pickup-Parking-Prices everywhere. They’re 18€/h. If you want your stupid tank within city limits pay for it.
So it’s not an uniquely American problem after all. Fuckers everywhere want bigger and bigger cars.
So it’s not an uniquely American problem after all. Fuckers everywhere.
As an American I find the thumbnail hilarious. Not that’s it’s not a “monster” pickup truck but that it is the tiniest little truck you’ll find on much of our roadways.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. It is hilarious in a black humor way. For us Europeans that’s a giant monster, because it is, while a lot of Americans would consider it a little baby truck because they are so brainwashed.
Agreed lol.
Its not literally the smallest pickup truck on American roads, a few people still have older, smaller models from the 80s or whatever…
…but far larger trucks than in this image are absolutely everywhere.
And I say this as someone who used to drive a hatchback and routinely laugh at all the moron truck drivers who spend an hour trying to figure out where to park their F350 duallies in a dense downtown part of American city, baffled by the idea that the urban core doesn’t have Walmart sized parking lots every block.
These literal tank sized trucks are the smallest modern variants of American trucks. The larger ones are incredibly common and even larger than these.
Here’s a quick example:
The white truck in this image is roughly the same size as the trucks in the tank/truck comparison and the article’s image, the black truck behind it is closer to what more and more Americans drive, and many drive ones that are even larger than that.
Cyclists beware
Society beware that we are tacitly allowing these child-murdering horrors into our communities
As someone who lives in the US, I can assure you that these monstrosities are killing plenty of adults too.
When one of them kills someone on an e-bike, the local government considers banning e-bikes instead of regulating 3-ton murder-mobiles.
Deadly carbrain contagion
Lemmy, open the article. It’s 6k vehicles per year in a continent of half a billion people.
It’s on the rise, as in before it was nobody, and now 0.1% of the farmers bought one. And a 100 lunatics.
It’s still illegal to drive and park in most places due to size, so as a pesky city dweller, I probably still won’t get to see any.
While I am not necessarily a fan of needlessly large trucks, I can buy an actual commercial transport vehicle or an actual bus and nobody would give a shit. You can get a 12 seat bus, drive it around alone all day long and never come up in these discussions. Hell, buy an RV of any size and you’re off the hook.
And then this “despite safety fears” bullshit. When in the history of man has a car buyer been thinking: Hmmm, I wonder if other people would be safe around me when I drive this vehicle? Nobody gives a shit.
Car is about ME, not the people around me. This will never change. Making cars about YOU and your emotions is what their entire marketing is all about. You have to be incredibly naive to expect that it won’t work.
You can get a 12 seat bus, drive it around alone all day long and never come up in these discussions.
I’m pretty sure it would come up if people started actually doing it en masse
Where I live, this is common and unnoticed. I see plenty of VW vans being driven by a mother on her way to the store after dropping off the kids at school. Maybe pickup trucks outrank those in other countries, but the mindset is all the same.
I’m not trying to apologize for trucks, but we need to expand our view.
