There is a new parking peril to look out for ladies – the camera phone. But is it fair to video someone’s feeble attempts at parking?
A few months ago on www.wheelsforwomen.ie we looked at the perils of parking. The challenge of the parallel park, concrete pillars that come out of nowhere in underground car parks, bad lighting, missing parking meters, and too tight spaces; we touched on all of the dangers that lie in store for the intrepid driver.
But in the last few months I’ve noticed one glaring omission from my list of things to watch out for when taking on that car park or that tricky parallel park. It’s that slim, shiny piece of technology we all love – the camera phone.
The real peril of parking is the opportunistic bystander who is only too ready to catch you in a parking pickle and upload the hilarious footage on YouTube for the entertainment of millions, or even billions.
YouTube is littered with videos of people struggling to park their cars, caught in a never-ending cycle of forward, reverse, forward, reverse and making more and more of an idiot of themselves.
It can be really awkward to park when you are being watched by someone parked on the opposite side of the road or behind you. Sometimes it feels as if they are waiting for you to fail and have to drive off, or worse still, hit the car beside you. But how would you react if someone whipped out a camera phone to video you as you tried to park your car?
Well it would be ok if you were a parallel parking aficionado and could niftily park your car with just one hand. It would be a case of, “yes I know I’m the parallel parking queen and please do put this footage of my handy work up on YouTube so I can become an Internet star and maybe get my own book deal from it”.
But if you were struggling and someone took out their phone I can imagine you would drive away pretty quickly.
Well not the woman who was caught on camera recently attempting to parallel park her Opel Corsa on a Belfast street. The 15 minute video shows the women making a complete mess of parking her car. Within 5 days of posting on YouTube, the video had over a million hits and had been picked up by the international media.
Is it fair to video someone in their moment of difficulty? If the person can be identified from the footage it is a bit cruel to subject them to global humiliation. But then again, if you are good at parking you have nothing to worry about.
To be honest, if someone is so spatially challenged that it takes them 15 minutes to park in a perfectly normal sized space they probably shouldn’t be on the road anyway…
