All right, perhaps calling them capital offenses may be overstating the violations. Admittedly, there are much more serious crimes that occur much less frequently. Crimes like murder, rape, kidnapping, aggravated assault and armed robbery are worse. So is the dealing of dangerous drugs like crack cocaine and heroin. These most serious crimes physically injure innocent human beings and make daily life a little less pleasurable.
But what of a crime committed daily by hundreds of otherwise nice, law-abiding citizens. Many, especially in the Bay Area have taken all the right positions on the difficult issues of the day: war, immigration, poverty, taxes and education. They understand that we live in a world village and that all of our actions affect others. And yet they repeatedly violate the law, inconveniencing a lot of innocent people. Why do they do it?
The crime they commit reflects almost every bad human characteristic: selfishness, inconsideration, laziness, lack of creativity. impatience and arrogance. It represents an absolute flouting of the law and is committed in plain sight, underlining its impunity.
The crime is rarely enforced in San Francisco. SFPD officers will actually drive around the crime scene going into the opposing lane of traffic to get away from it. Controllers charged with the primary enforcement responsibility, are reluctant to engage the offenders.
The crime is double parking. Nice people do it for a few minutes while they do their errands. There is the ATM, the cleaners, the bakery, the little one’s nursery school, that overpriced cup of coffee, we just can’t live without. Some of us feel that we are too busy or important to take the time to find parking. We know that there is a greater chance of getting a ticket for an expired meter, than for double parking, so we double park.
When the function of parking control was taken away from the SFPD and given to a separate department, police lost interest in it. Since there are no perks and no promotional possibilities for police, many tend to ignore parking problems like double parking. Parking controllers, who are not armed, feel intimidated to enforce these violations without police backup.
The controllers fear that some of these double parkers are not the nice people we think them to be but rather may be sociopaths who don’t give a damn about parking regulations and are willing to physically demonstrate their displeasure.
In the meantime, the City’s streets are getting congested with obstacle courses of double parked cars on both sides of the street. Our byways will soon resemble the arteries of a person with advanced heart disease whose veins are filled with plaque.
Some of the best examples of outright and constant double parking can be found on Union Street, on 9th Avenue between Lincoln and Irving, on Irving between 9th and 7th, on Clement Street and on Chestnut in the Marina. On any given moment of any given day before the stores close, there will be at least one double-parked car in each of these busy locations. If you go to Sacramento Street near Laurel Village, you may get to see cars double parked in both directions to allow its inhabitants to chat.
Of course, it should be noted, that we are all so busy nowadays that parking just becomes too time consuming. We have our endless cell phone calls, our unquestionable need for coffee, our many business transactions aimed at making the most for doing the least. We have our jobs and careers to which we are so dedicated for our daily bread, which we must share selflessly with whatever family we’ve been able to amass. We have our routines and we are always behind schedule.
And then when we want to do the right thing and wait for a parking space about to be vacated, we sit idling while the person in the parked car enjoys the enviable position for as long as humanly possible. While we wait patiently and proudly, we watch the parked drivers check their appearance, apply needed enhancements, check their voicemail, return phone calls to people desperately awaiting their reply, while our engine is running and the people behind us are getting impatient.
So what are we to do?
Maybe, we could eliminate some of the many things we feel we absolutely have to do. Maybe we could leave early so that we are not rushed when looking for a space. We could try to remind ourselves that there are actually other people out there. We are not alone. We should consider their needs as well as our own, even though ours are so much more interesting.
The mayor and the well-reimbursed directors of the city’s parking enforcement agency could decide that they are going to crack down on this socially unacceptable behavior. The mayor could have the SFPD motorcycle officers provide backup for Parking Controllers in the congested areas.
The city would gain needed revenue that could be used to pay for more Parking Controllers, the city streets would be less congested and driving time and fuel use would decrease. And all of us would find ourselves more motivated to behave like the caring, enlightened people we know we really are.
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