The amount of mental gymnastics I hear from people who illegally park or obstruct society for their own selfish reasons is beyond me. There are places to park, there are places to not park, they don't have an overlap.
Because nobody strongly abuses this, it generally works fine and people go on with their lives around them. Even with the small neighborhood streets around Tokyo, you rarely see it being treated as an issue. At worst, if a truck is trying to pass, a quick honk will cause whoever is driving to rush out and move the car.
I do get disillusioned sometimes though, living in a society where people have a general level of respect for each other.
There’s your likely reason for why the rule is strictly enforced in the US.
Really, it makes no sense to me that people demand and expect law enforcement to work equally for everyone while also wanting to make an exception of themselves.
I also agree on the baseline level of respect and order, going back to Sydney is sometimes jarring where some things don’t ‘just work’ as they do here.
I first saw this behavior when I went to school in Rochester, NY and wondered what the hell everybody was doing. Never encountered it growing up outside of Boston.
This might have something to do with it.
But I'm not talking about blocking the road entirely, of course that's not the case, just parking in places that is not allowed to park statically.