38 Opinion
What Is a Parking Spot? A Gwangju News Special Investigation
Gwangju News, August 2022
gwangjunewsgic.com
COMMUNITY
By William Urbanski
T
he problem of “where to park my car” is one that has perplexed and baffled the greatest minds since the inception of the personal automobile. As of August 2022, there is still no universally agreed-upon answer to this elusive question, resulting in literal pandemonium on streets and roads worldwide, especially in Gwangju. More so than solving the greatest mysteries of physics, medicine, economics, and mathematics, creating a universally agreed-upon answer to the question of where a car can and should be parked is the greatest intellectual challenge facing the world, and by extension, the city of Gwangju, today. ESSENTIAL DEFINITIONS A “car” is basically a large steel box with four wheels that quickly carries people along a flat surface called a “road.” “Cars” do move quite quickly most of the time, but occasionally the person controlling the car (called a “driver”) must stop and exit the vehicle. The verb that describes this cluster of actions (i.e., stopping and exiting a car) is “to park.” The simplest and most convenient place to park is, obviously, in the middle of a road, but doing so creates a dangerous problem. Other cars that are moving quickly (sometimes as fast as 50 km/h!), risk colliding into the non-moving car. Even in the best-case scenario, a car that parks on a road can prevent other cars from driving on the road. One possible solution to the safety hazard created by cars parking on the road is a bold and radical pilot project currently underway all over Gwangju and other parts of the world. According to this scheme, certain areas become specially designated places where a driver can stop his or her vehicle and then exit it safely with minimal risk of causing a collision
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or inconvenience to others. These specially designated places are called “parking spots.” In short, a “parking spot” is any place where it is OK to stop, exit, and leave a vehicle unattended. But, and this is the tricky part, not every place a driver stops automatically becomes a parking spot. By using all their available critical thinking skills, anyone with the intelligence to chew a stick of gum or tie their own shoelaces can learn to effectively identify and utilize these so-called “parking spots,” which have already begun to pop up all over Gwangju. HOW TO IDENTIFY A PARKING SPOT In a sense, a “parking spot” is more of an intellectual construct than a physical place. That being said, there are physical things that indicate where one may be found. The first thing to look for is that, generally speaking, a parking spot is delineated by solid white lines, each approximately fifteen centimeters in width, that have been painted on the ground. These lines create a rectangle pattern roughly the size of an automobile. Sometimes, there are only three lines (usually two long ones and one short one that connects them on the end), so it is necessary to use one’s full power of visualization to imagine that the fourth line is there. In even more specialized cases, there may only be two short horizontal lines. The main takeaway is that in the vast majority of cases, lines that suggest a large rectangle shape indicate a parking spot. The second telltale sign of a parking spot is some kind of sign or marking that says something along the lines of “this is a parking spot,” “it is OK to park here,” or “you may park here.”
2022-07-26 �� 3:50:27
