Shipley

Lads..."Calm down..Calm down"....er sorry..went to Liverpool yesterday ...

get a beater ! instantly the shoe is on the other foot.

I have a little Fiat and its hilarious careering headlong into a space with the full knowledge that if you hit something...it doesn't really matter.

Watch em flinch as you screech to a halt laughing whilst they virtually have to dive over the bonnets of their expensive cars...terror in their eyes !!

My S never sees a car park other than that at work which is huge, I'm lucky there.

Sometimes for the Tesco trip we take the beater in favour of my wife's C8 which has already taken a ding.

Play em at their own game its great fun

DanTheMan107

I hate it the most of all, especially as my S had the drivers door deliberately kicked in causing over

rahula

Can't be bothered to read the whole thead but everyone who has said that people who ding other people's cars need to be shot are right. I was in Windsor and parked up carefully. I return to my car and see the woman in the car next to mine had both her doors open to get some "fresh mothering air". Now tell me this. If the wind had blown open her door on my car would she have owned up. would she. Stupid ing ugly fat biatch! My car rarely goes into public parking and on three occassions when it has I have three nice scrathches to show for it on an otherwise immaculate paintjob. I hate every other road user.

I also did some damage to my own car two days ago when I opened the door of the garage and forgetting my car was close to the door. Doh! Need to paint and polish it out now. Stupid me.

gaddafi

I've got a beater and usually do have one.

Although I'm not paranoid about parking it anywhere, I would still expect recompense if I saw someone ding it.

The only circumstances in which I wouldn't might be if I was driving a hammerited landie or similar.

And I'm still mindful of other cars, whatever I'm driving.

In fact I'm much more concerned about dinging a 20 yr old Mini than I am making some sow walk 100yds to Sainsburys.

Paper Lawyer

Personally I'm all for banning fat people from parking their cars in parking spaces - get on yer bike you lazy git and burn some calories off.

Perhaps there should be a company car section - those feckers don't give a toss because they don't pick up the tab. And a beater section.

gaddafi

another VIP ticket required.......

UK_S2000

Yeah I take my Escort to the supermarkets and just lob it anywhere. If Col wants to ram it with his Orion, game on. Let's have some Destruction Derby down the local Asda.

Out of interest I wonder if all the people who drive the

Shiskine

Once again, my 18 months with the world's largest parking management company have come in useful ...

Parking spaces are typically 2.4m wide x 4.8m long. IIRC, there is no law about this, simply a convention. Architects, designers will use CAD machines that draw and layout spaces in these dimensions.

However, as Neil H pointed out, some car park owners are recognising that 4x4s and coupes with long doors need more space, and Lend Lease (Bluewater's developers), specifically built deluxe width spaces. Bigger bays means fewer spaces of course ...

With regard to supermarkets and retail parks, there is a campaign (imaginatively) called The Baywatch Campaign which aims to draw attention to bay abuse. Before I left the exciting world of parking, I was actually in discussion with Sainsburys about this very subject, but like most things, they won't pay for enforcement or policing, despite the fact they acknowlege the car park is the "front garden" to their store. There are in fact a lot of business opportunities to be had in the car park (witness the increasing number of car wash services etc.) so it is time the owners recognised that a crap car park will drive custom away.

The US company I worked for championed what is called "hairpin striping" when it comes to marking out bays. This is becoming increasingly common now in new car parks. Rather than the single white lines defining each bay, hairpin striping uses much wider lines (usually in a funky colour) to mark each bay. Consequently, the unpainted area of the bay is barely the width of the vehicle track. It has been shown that this style of painting (although more expensive for the owner) helps parkers centre their vehicles better, meaning they are more evenly spaced giving improved access for doors to open etc.

san2000

Speaking of which, I still need to give you an address.

Putney

I have picked up door dents on every single car i have owned. It really pisses me off how people just don't care.

Yesterday i was woken up by my bike alarm going off. i shot up out of bed as i had parked it by my back garden. the stupid bint from up stairs had bashed it with her washing basket as she walked out to hang her clothes up in her garden. I have a few little scratches in the lacquer but it still really pisses me off. I think she did it on purpose as i had put a complaint in against their irish wolf hound making shit loads of noise about a month ago (i live in flats). I went out and turned the alarm off so she saw me.