That can be both incompetent and arseholes. The 2 aren't mutually exclusive.
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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We have a suckhead that parks his delivery van on the middle of a cross over (we call it a zebra pad) everytime to deliver goods to our local flower shop. So I tell him he is unlawfully parked, he says I shouldn't worry, it is just for a minute. I tell him it takes only a second for a pedestrian to get hurt. He didn’t care the slightest bit.
In Germany, parents cannot be held liable if their child under 12 (or 14?) damages illegally parked cars with their bike.... Just a random fact of the day, nothing to do with your comment.
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In my country you can submit a photo of this to the local police with a statement swearing it's a true photo, then your name and tax ID number. Then in 6-9 months the vehicle owner will receive a citation and fee in the mail.
It's fun because you have a serial offender who thinks they are getting away with it like this, but in 6-9 months they will get the first few and correct their behavior but continue to receive the citations. Then they will finally look at the dates of the offense on the citation and realize they have thousands of euros in fees still coming for months of shitty behavior.
Oh, man. We want immediate justice so often, but I almost think the delay is the best part of that.
Still means 6 months of cyclist frustration though…
That's the dream. Where do you live?
Well, would be better if you could submit it anonymously.
we need an (optional) open source app for that where you just open the app and take a picture (with license plate visible) and click "submit". It submits the time, location, and photo. If it takes more than 30 seconds to report this, they failed.
People here have developed an app that makes it that easy to submit (the app essentially composes the email for you). However, without your full name and tax ID number nothing will happen from the police. As has been pointed out, the system is open to abuse if it became anonymous.
I see no abuse that can't extremely easily be managed. The NSA has been able to use image recognition for dicks since they wiretapped all of Yahoo Video like 20 years ago.
Actually, I spent an inordinate amount of time building exactly this in my head for most of the day following these photos. There are two major obstacles that I can think of:
- Abuse. You will very likely get random dick pics and other terrible stuff sent to such a system. I suppose you could fight this by requiring registration with some id or something, but that's its own can of worms.
- I don't know how common it is to have GPS enabled by default on people's cameras. On top of that, even though I have it enabled on my phone, 1 of the 3 photos taken that day had grossly inaccurate GPS attached to it, so now I'd be looking at building some sort of friendly UI to allow people to fix the GPS from their photos.
The server-side stuff is easy (at least for someone with my background) but the front-end is sufficiently complicated that I couldn't do a good job on my own.
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dick pics are inevitable and trivial to filter out.
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The system should absolutely have graceful fallback. If GPS is off, just prompt the user for the location
Even if GPS is innacurate and 20% of reports have to be trashed, just by making it easier to submit you'll have far more reports in general that its still better to have an easy system that sometimes doesn't work than a hard system that very few people use and always works.
Delivery trucks, full stop, around here. Though some stop on the street instead, which I prefer, but car drivers usually don't.
In the end, I find it hard to be angry at overworked, underpaid people, who have to work around infrastructure that clearly hasn't been planned with their job in mind.
At least UPS is switching to large bike-like vehicles around here. Hope that trend continues.
Don't they have traffic wardens in Cambridge? They'd be fined and possibly towed as well here
The police very, very rarely do anything about this kind of thing here. It’s not just Amazon; even everyday random people just stop in the middle of the street to pick people up or drop people off.
The worst offender is Uber Eats, which regularly completely blocks up roads near restaurants.
You'd think, but there are three levels of responsibility: the city council, the county council, and the local police. Calling any one of them to complain and demand enforcement results in them redirecting you to one of the others.
Basically, unless you're blocking car traffic, no one with power cares.
Just gotta wait for that cyclist that turns into the road because a car was blocking him. Then it'll be all "oh no how could this ever happen?"
..and gets sucked under a lorry
But why weren't they wearing their helmet/high-vis/body armour???
Honestly they should've worn their metal exoskeleton with four wheels
Plus the wardens have to watch the vehicle for 10 minutes before issuing a ticket. The driver would have completed the delivery and gone within that 10 minutes.
Why would you permit someone to park illegally for 10 minutes?!?
Uk law. Unless its a red line, you can stop there.
So paint red lines along the bike lanes?
That is an excellent idea.
I have to deal with similar issues in my neighbourhood; any service vehicle will have to block the bike lane because that houses driveway is already full of vehicle.
Service vehicle never "have" to block the bike lane. They could simply block the general purpose lane instead.
In other words, they are making a deliberate choice to fuck cyclists' safety in order to prioritize convenience for car drivers.
I think you're attributing malice to laziness.
I cant think of a single courier or delivery driver that would actively think "let me take an extra 20 seconds to reverse into this driveway just to fuck with bikes". They just want to get it done and get to the next
I think the word "deliberate" might be a little strong, because it's not one person's choice alone. It probably is laziness, but the way the road is made makes the lazy choice the one that screws over everyone else to prioritise cars. They could leave the van in the middle of the road, but drivers would get angry, so they make a subconscious choice.
Cars are large, cumbersome, dangerous objects with horns on them, and the road's design centers them. If you park in the middle of the road, cars are so space-inefficient that you cause a traffic jam and people get upset and honk, but nobody's in much more danger. If you block a pathway for pedestrians and cyclists, they can get around, but it's much more dangerous, especially for children and the disabled, but most of the time the delivery driver isn't forced to deal with that fact. Those people are much less visible.
So the result is that the mode of transport which causes the most problems for the people around it is also prioritised above all others. Decisions were made at the city planning level that put cycle paths together with cars. There are much better ways of doing things, for instance separate paths, with bollards so cars can't just leave the road. You could make delivery vehicles smaller and lighter, with dedicated delivery bays. You could narrow roads and slow them down to disincentivise inner-city traffic, and encourage the use of bypasses, and subtly teach drivers to expect frequent stops in town.
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Curious how it never occurs to them to block the driving lane, or you know, park around the corner.
Not the first time, not the last. Amazon delivery drivers are terrible in every area. Urban or rural they will find a way to block traffic, especially when there is a nearby way to not do so.
I suspect it's a selection effect. Amazon is a pain in the arse to work for. Decent drivers are in demand. This makes it easy for good drivers to jump ship to other companies. This leaves the inexperienced or just stupid drivers left to deal with the BS.
If you've not driven a van before, they are intimidating to maneuver, at first. It's takes time and skill to spin them on a dime, and slot them in, with awareness of how much space you are leaving. Novice drivers simply lack that skill.
I've seen them deliberately park at a tee intersection to block all three legs rather than any one of them. That's less incompetence and more not giving a shit about other people. Otoh this is in California so that's kinda just how people act.
Being an incompetent and being an arsehole are not mutually exclusive things.
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