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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

As far as I'm aware, having any wheel on the footpath is illegal except in areas specifically signposted for it, but my experience has been that handhaving just didn't care

https://www.parkeerbord.nl/wetgeving/is-parkeren-op-de-stoep...

This spot used to drive me absolutely insane when walking to school with my kids - the gemeente even added marked parking spots and drivers just stole the footpath anyway, so we had to walk in the street, and the gemeente straight refused to issue tickets. The guy on the phone told me "it's not causing any trouble" because hey, it's not like _he's_ ever had to push a pram in the street.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/YD5w84R19TGQgPX78

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I have - or rather had, died - an uncle who had a very effective way of dealing with this. He just walked over the cars.

RIP Cor H., one of a kind. I'm pretty sure the fact that in that neighborhood even now people are religiously parking on the street and never on the sidewalk is a remnant of his presence in this world.

I might have it wrong in the inside/outside city limits with respect to parking on the curb as there are differences. There are also municipal rules but in general they are only for very specific locations afaik.

If you get injured because the municipality refused to act they are on the hook. Thell them you want it on paper they say they will do nothing to prevent this and you want them telling you specifically you have to walk on the street because they do not act on illegally parked cars.

Edit: where I live I have the option of specifically reporting a dangerous situation which in your case I would: near school zones with children involved it always is in my opinion but who am I to judge. It also helps if more people complain. We have a load of parking tourists here since the municipality mode the payed zones so more traffic and more annoyances. My first messages got impolitely unanswered but after a year of complaining by pretty much everyone they finally start doing things.

To be fair, parking illegally and/or disrespectfully is not a problem with the vehicle type but with the driver and lack of local enforcement. People also block footpaths, roads and parking spots in Polos and similar smaller vehicles, and plenty of workers cause issues with their regular european cans and pickup trucks. A favorite of mine being small roads with perpendicular parking spots, with an extended Mercedes Sprinter parked so that both footpath and road is restricted.

Rude drivers and lack of enforcement are issues, of course, but bigger vehicles make it even harder to walk around a vehicle on the footpath.

Our regular local European vehicles are often larger, they're just safer. So no, nothing specific to the use of imported vehicles.

For example, a Mercedes Sprinter in the standard long box configuration (as is used by local grocery delivery services, plumbers and the likes where I live) is 7.4 meters long , way longer than even the longest American pickup trucks (for some of them, several meters longer!), and is just as wide as them.

In custom box or pickup bed configuration (used by e.g., gardeners), these vehicles get wider (and sharper).

You rarely see Sprinters parked in pedestrian areas though, they are commercial vehicles. Whereas these RAMs are often used as standard personal vehicles for grocery shopping.

I can't speak for where you live of course, but they park in pedestrian areas where I live.

It's the norm in many businesses for employees to drive their work vehicle home and park it where they live, so they're everywhere. Not as many as regular passenger cars of course, but you'll see them on any residential road. Gardeners, plumbers, electricians, delivery services, this is the norm for all of them (a perk of sorts). Even big name-brand logistics companies, as it's common for the drivers to be independent contractors owning the van themselves so home is the only place to park.

They are also used for errands. They're legal for private use proportionate to the amount of VAT paid irrespective of registration type here, so you'll see them pick up/drop off kids, do groceries, recycle bottles, etc. in such vehicles too. Pretty sure that would be just as legal where you are given familiar EU rules.

What are you talking about? Damn near every self employed tradesman parks his van where he lives.

Yeah, normal sized ones. There are a few in the street out front, but they dont invade the sidewalk as much, and fit in a standard parking spot.

As I said, I rarely see Sprinters, might be an Amsterdam thing due to how hard it is to drive and park them here. Ford Transit / VW Transporter / MB Vito / Renault Trafic are far more common. It doesn't seem like much, but an extra 20cm width + 1m length make a massive difference in overall size and driveability.

Yes, but a Sprinter has a short nose and the driver's position is such they can see everything in front of them. Those ugly penis extension trucks have huge blind spots immediately in front of them.

Absolutely true but beside the current point of whether they are more or less in the way when parked in residential areas than our normal commercial vehicles.

"Let's drive around the hood to flex my Mercedes Sprinter", said noone ever.

These are strictly professional cars. When they are not "in duty" they're probably parked at a garage.

On the other hand, an American open truck driving/parked in a residential area is almost certainly some show-off.

You misunderstand - almost every tradesman here drives their work vehicle home and drives errands in it. Use of the company vehicle for commuting is considered a standard perk of these trades for regular employees - free fuel (fuel is way more expensive here), they can some days drive straight to the first customer (saves time), and might save them from getting a car (maybe the spouse has a microcar for their commute, otherwise biking and public transport are common).

Source: I live here and see it every day. Family, friends and customers are doing it, plus many eons ago I too was a tradesman driving home every day in the company work van.

(Heck, many companies wouldn't even have a place to park all their company cars at once, many such smaller companies run out of regular residential buildings with no dedicated parking.)

Good point; I should actually make sure to pay attention rather than reading "Sprinters are bigger" and applying that to my hatred of American trucks!

> For example, a Mercedes Sprinter in the standard long box configuration (as is used by local grocery delivery services, plumbers and the likes where I live) is 7.4 meters long , way longer than even the longest American pickup trucks (for some of them, several meters longer!), and is just as wide as them.

Seems correct on relative length but not width; the F-450 Super Duty body is a bit wider without mirrors than a Sprinter with mirrors;

The Dodge RAM that was being discussed is according to the numbers i see 2020 mm wide without mirrors. The F150 SuperCab (representing the most common US pickup truck) is 2030 mm wide without mirrors. The F-450 Super Duty SRW is only 2032 wide without mirrors - it's just the DRW configuration that adds extra wheels and super wide wheel wells on the back.

A standard mercedes sprinter in van configuration is 2020 mm wide without mirrors, which is as wide as the RAM and just 10mm narrower than the f150. I suspect the sprinter has wider mirrors, but I don't have the F-150 numbers to compare to so I'll leave that unanswered. Pickup configurations of the sprinter go much wider (and have extended mirrors to fit) - a common compact pickup bed configuration has a 2030mm internal bed width for example.

Note that the F-450 Super Duty is not applicable to the discussion as it won't work in the EU: A standard vehicle (class B) has an upper weight limit of 3500 kg. The F-450 Super Duty would have to be registered as an actual truck (class C), which requires a different drivers license and the use of a tachograph to track all driving and adherence to resting period rules. We don't use those vehicle classes unless strictly necessary.

> To be fair, parking illegally and/or disrespectfully is not a problem with the vehicle type but with the driver and lack of local enforcement.

For cars that can be sold without having to get special approval, the obnoxious drivers are a minority (well, maybe BMWs excluded ;-P).

But what driving/parking manners would you expect from someone who went out of their way and paid extra to get e.g. a Ram or an F-150? They're almost guaranteed to disregard any inconvenience they cause with their driving.

it's just a lot easier to park illegally (space wise) when your vehicle is huge / larger than the usual parking spaces. on my usual bike route there's at least one spot where people often park huge vehicles partway over the bike lane, forcing me to divert into oncoming vehicular traffic. small cars fit, broad cars don't. by law, they're plain not allowed to park there, but when you call the drivers out on it, they usually just argue that it's not their fault if the parking spots are too narrow.

The issue you're running into is that you're a crazy extremist and so the parking ticket people who are accountable to a government that has to at least pretend to care about public opinion aren't going to enforce the rules the way crazy extremists like you want, they're gonna enforce the rules in the way some approximation of the general public wants.

The government doesn't want to have it's agents doing "aha, gotcha" stuff on technicalities and the strict letter of the law except where doing so aligns with broader public support because doing so without that support will not endear the government to the people. Reporting a Superduty for parking like an ass in the same way that a bunch of other people are parked like an ass because you don't like the Superduty isn't gonna change the enforcement calculus.

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