Is deliberately blocking a driver's side door a thing?

[BlackAmericanoNoSugar]

I've been driving for decades and in all that time I've never had a car park so close to my driver's door that I couldn't get in at all although there have been a few tight squeezes, until this car where I've had two instances of another car parking within about 15 cm of my door. This car is the widest car that I've ever owned. However, I can still park it within the lines with space between my car and the line. The two times that I was blocked the other car parked right up on my side of their parking space leaving a gap on the other side, if the other car had parked in the centre of their space there would have been enough room.

The first time I was coming out of a shop on the other side of the car park so I saw the woman pull into the space beside me. There were plenty of empty spaces, including four in a row on my driver's side, but she pulled in tight to my car leaving a massive space on her other side and then hopped over her centre console to her passenger side to get out (she parked nose in and I was nose out). I was waiting for DS to come back from the barbers so I went and sat in my passenger seat. While I was there she came back to her car, put some bags into the boot, gave me a filthy look and went off again. When DS came back I got him to hop from the passenger to driver side and pull the car forward for me (he's very limber).

The second time was the other day when I had a hospital appointment. The hospital car park does have the tiniest spaces that it's possible to have so I chose the end of a row so that I could put my passenger side tight up against a wall, leaving space on the driver's side. When I came back there was a car parked with its wheels on the white line leaving not enough room to open my door. It was a Yaris and very short so there was just enough room to get the back driver's side door and I climbed in from there (with difficulty). Again there were plenty of other spaces.

Once I thought was a bit of a fluke, something that was bound to happen at some stage, but twice in six months after nearly 40 years of it never happening seems more than coincidence. Do people really hate wide cars and want to punish them?

It is not a new thing, I grew up in Dublin, my uncle used to have flyers in his car that said…….

The next time you park so close to my drivers door, leave a bloody tin opener, he delighted in distributing them.

This was in the late 70’s when the traffic went the right way around the green and hard lock was still directing cars into parking spaces. Edited to correct spelling of distributed.

Mmmmh…
I just googled OPs car width and mine… mine is even wider 🫣
Never had someone blocking me in like this though, I’d think it was deliberate!

OP, I’m fat, like really fat lol your mistake in the car park was to park so close to the wall.
i love spaces near the wall because I park driver side near the wall and leave all the space I need and there’s zero chance that space will reduce by the time I come back 🤭

Cant advise for the rest

My above post was in response to this

It is v annoying. I have gone back into the store and asked for a tannoy message to go
out to the driver of the offending car. Im not climbing in from passenger side when I hand parked within the lines.

Wider/ bigger cars should have wider bays but far away from the entrance.

If the space is tight I'll park so my passenger side is right up to the passenger side of next car as driver can pull forward to let them in. It's not rocket science. And would worry about my car getting damaged by driver door otherwise

I've just checked and it is almost exactly 20cm bigger than my previous car, however when I was test driving it I didn't really feel that it was wider and I didn't go to a car park on the test drive.

For the time being I need a 4-wheel drive as my elderly mother lives in a very steep location, and while she hasn't had much in the way of emergencies so far, if she does have an emergency it has as good a chance of being on an icy/snowy day as any other. I also need a big enough boot to take a large dog crate. I wanted to go full electric and I make a regular journey of 230km that I wanted to be able to do without stopping to charge. I looked at all the cars that would fill those criteria and bought the one I liked the best. I will consider parkability for my next car. Once the dog and my Mum are no longer with us and the DC are independent I will almost certainly go back to owning a Fiat 500 because that was my favourite car that I ever owned.

I have a Fiat 500.

I'm pretty good and parking it. But if you've parked your very wide car so it's right up to the line, I'm still going to park my car in the middle of the space.

It's not my responsibility you can get into your car, it's my responsibility to park considerately in the middle of the space.

Just to be clear, I did not and would not park up to the line. I wasn't even parked in the middle in the hospital car park, I was parked with my passenger side hard up against a wall. The person who parked on the line in that car park was was the Yaris owner who parked afterwards.

I have a large car- 25 years ago I'd have bought an estate car to do the same job, but all cars are bulkier now. Even "small" cars have a lot more external volume because of the modern safety features like crumple zones and chunkier columns.

I rarely have issues, but tend to take the option of parking in a quiet corner where viable. Not an option at the hospital where all spaces are about the size of a large car. Fortunately the one space avaliable after circling the car park was passenger, passenger on either side. I let DS out, reversed in and then got him to release me through the boot and re-entered via the boot too.

I try to be concious of drivers' access.
When I was pregnant I had neither the mobility nor the volume to get through tight gaps or wriggle in through other doors. I needed the door fully open in order to squeeze my bulk in behind the steering wheel and couldn't even do that in the last month so had to stop driving.

My idea of being lazy is finding an easy space and walking more where viable.

Or maybe start using the parent and child spaces ....

Yes.

And to the point of both cars and people being too fat - both are fixable problems (the cars being too fat easier - just tell manufacturers that they have to make cars within a certain size guideline). Fixing people is somewhat harder.

Bought a car that's too big for parking spaces? Sounds like a you problem

I had this recently. I parked my medium-sized hatchback and when I came back there was a brand new massive Tesla parked 15 cm from my driver’s door. I had to climb through the passenger side swearing profusely. The car park was less than half full I was very tempted to slam my driver’s door against it.

It is a large car but also expensive looking, so maybe that's another reason?...

Not sure if it's a "thing" but the combination of very tight spaces and massive cars certainly doesn't help. There is a car park outside the hairdressers that I go to which is almost impossibly tight -so tight that there are frequent bangs and scrapes as it is laid out so badly. You HAVE to reverse park or getting out is a nightmare. Unfortunately, reverse parking seems to be a tough one for some drivers, particularly when they panic about the resulting queue while they try.
It's such a contrast to when I'm in America and the spaces are gigantic and double length.

The issue isn't being a big car, it's being electric

I also drive a full electric and get given dirty looks a lot by twats who think they are superior in some way and look down on electric...

You must have been lucky, that’s happened to me loads of times. I just get out the passenger side. Spaces are small for the wide cars we have now, they might have needed extra room on the other side of their car so parked a bit close to your driver side. With the amount of cars on the road and the state of parking I think we all have to be as chilled and flexible as we can.

There's some car parks near my that are as a pp described, too narrow so that you either have to reverse park or make a mess of it.
Unfortunately the number of people that drive in forward and make a mess of it it high. That's especially the case when they've got large cars.

It's your responsibility to leave enough room between your door and the white line so you can get out. As long as the other person is fully in their space then they are parked correctly. If the car on the other side is right against the line then a car in the middle may need to park closer to the line on your side to allow themselves space to get out. All you can control is the space between your driver side door and the white line.

This almost exactly sums up how I feel. I have a small car. When people have parked over the lines, for their own convenience, I have parked right next to them.

I have a lady who parks in her allocated space next to me but she will often park very near to the white line that divides our spaces and sometimes even on it or over it so I struggle to put anything in my car if I park dead centre of my space.

I struggle with my back so have to put heavy things on the passenger seat through the passenger door as I find it hard to haul them across to the passenger side once sat in the car.

I only park in the middle of my space because if the car on the right side of me decides to not park correctly then I will struggle to get in and out. Sometimes they swap their vehicle and have a great big van and then I will struggle to get out my side if I gave the woman on the left of me space to get back in her car after she's parked near our dividing line.

I So I have taken to deliberately not moving my car over when she parks on the line which means she has about 6 inches to get out. I thought she might have got the message after the first dozen or so times but she doesn't. It drives me mad, I'm sure she does it on purpose to annoy me.

A wide car is always going to have these issues - you wouldn't have noticed them when you were driving a smaller car, but now the size of your car means that you're more limited in terms of getting in/out unless the person next to you has parked bang in the middle of their space.

Btw - a 4x4 isn't needed for icy/snowy roads, a good set of winter tyres or at the least all season tyres will serve you much better.

I have a teensy twenty year old Corolla and some of the car parks here (Oz) are barely wide enough for it!