Parking

While doing some last minute shopping in E-mall in downtown Cebu last Wednesday, I noticed a poster placed in strategic areas in the mall’s underground parking area. The poster had an illustration of a properly parked car and another one of a car that is not parked properly. The text written on the poster was very easy to understand. Very elementary even, that a child who has just started to read could very well understand it.

“Vehicle must be parked properly at the designated parking slot, which is in-between two parallel lines. Vehicles that are not properly parked will be penalized,” the poster read.

I found the poster amusing that I took a picture of it and posted it on my Facebook page. No, I was not shocked to find it plastered in the different walls of the mall’s parking area. In fact, I was glad that the mall administration took the initiative of educating motorists who use their parking space and penalizing violators, too, which I hope they will really impose to teach these drivers a lesson.

The mall management must have been driven to frustration with these drivers that they spent for printing posters and I fully get why. You see there are a lot of drivers here in Cebu who are not only lacking in driving skills, but parking skills, as well.  Let us call them “parking idiots.” These people suck at properly parking their vehicles that you wonder why, in the first place, they were issued a driver’s license! There are two possible reasons I can think of why parking idiots exist – they do not know how to properly park or they are just plain inconsiderate of other people who may want to use parking space.

You see them all around the metro, occupying parking space meant for two vehicles, parking in areas with visible “No Parking” signs, or even parking their vehicles in slots designated for persons with disabilities. I remember seeing a picture, posted by one of my Facebook friends, of a car occupying two parking slots in one of the malls. The picture showed the car’s license plates and a lot of FB users threw in a criticism or two for the car owner.

In other countries, driving and parking skills are important to get a license. One must know both to be able to drive. I guess this isn’t so here in the Philippines, judging from the many crazy drivers and parking idiots we have in our midst.

But then you cannot really blame these people for going around Cebu flaunting their lack of skills especially that the Land Transportation Office, the government agency tasked to issue drivers’ licenses is not really strict in giving out licenses. I have learned from a colleague who is a designated agent of the office that the LTO does not conduct actual driving tests for reasons such as not having a vehicle for such tests and for lack of manpower. And if ever the LTO does conduct these actual driving tests, they are usually done at random. So there, you cannot really blame parking idiots from existing!

Aside from getting parking idiots to pay fines, well at the E-mall for now, I also hope that the posters in the E-mall parking area will achieve another thing – insult these errant drivers.

If I were a holder of a professional driver’s license, or even a non-professional one, I would be insulted for having to pay a fine (Oh how I wish the mall management would increase the fine from P500 to a thousand, maybe) for not parking properly. But then again having these errant drivers feel insulted is a long shot. The fines would be okay for now.

Another wish is that other malls or parking areas in the metro, private or public, will also impose fines on drivers who do not park their vehicles properly. It’s about time to impose fines for bad or inconsiderate parking!

Having good parking skills does not only tell people how your driving skills are. It also shows that you think of others and that you have manners.

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