When applying for planning permission, developers want spaces as small as permitted - given that they have to provide certain number of spaces according to the size of the development, the amount of space for buildings would have to go down if spaces were made bigger, with reduction in rental income or increase in land costs from buying bigger plots - so a big no-no as far as they're concerned.

Similar logic applies at motorway service areas - unless you "qualify" to park in the HGV or coach spaces, it's impossible if you have a motorhome or panel van - some MSA's issue PCNs if you park in the wrong type of space - but perversely when they do provide a handful of caravan spaces, they never penalised others for using them despite penalising caravanners if the don't use them!

Edited by RT on 01/03/2016 at 09:09

When I was delivering to supermarkets years ago I waited about an hour after the store had put out 3 calls for the owner of a car that was parked in the service road to come and move it, When he did arrive he threatened to knock my teeth out.

Ah Wackyracer the dish eaten cold is better, park so THEY can't get out, have a chat with store manager who'll love it, go and sit in canteen stuffing subsidised egg and bacon down your neck and take an elongated lunch hour...you'll hear the steam coming out of their ears long before you see them.

ORB you're a naughty boy, good wheeze that and if you don't mind i'm going to note that for future use meself.

It was the customer services people who said thats what they do and called over the tannoy, they said it works every time, people go rushing out.

But why is it that when you go to a supermarket car park and park away from everyone else, leaving half a dozen spaces either side of you, someone will always come and park right next to you - and probably so close up you need to climb in the otehr side!

Indeed! "Got to complete the row" seems to be the thought here.

I work p/t at a petrol station attached to a major supermarket. There is no "colleague" parking, so we also have to park in the main car park. I always try and park at the end of an aisle, with one set of wheels slightly in the white hatching area, leaving a good sized gap between me and the next parking space in.

Nobody has challenged me yet, as it's not causing anyone any harm. However, some prawns still think it gives them carte blanche to park nice and near me. I have however avoided parking dings for the last 3 years of doing this.

The new craze appears to be parking diagonally,ie front o/s corner level with right white line, n/s/r with left hand corner

the only thing that occurs is other drivers follow suit and you get a line of them like it?. bigger the motor the more difficult to impossible to do but they still try.

If there is an advantage to it, I cant see it lol

No advantage, it is due to plain incompetence or being too lazy to apply full lock (though hard to understand as 99% of cars have power steering.)

The trend for "turning a rectangle into a parallelogram" (or TRIP for short) is sometimes used, I'm convinced, as a protest against rigid planning rules and the short sighted policy of always drawing parking slots as perfect parallel rectangles, even when there is space to lay out a far more ergonomic herringbone shape, allowing easier entry and exit and the luxury of reversing in (something a lot of drivers gave up back in the 1960s!)
In fact, most parking slots, loading bays, entrances and bus stops are designed around the premise that a car can be slotted into place sideways or turned into a driveway at a sharp 90 degree approach.
I do often wonder whether town planners actually drive cars themselves.

Our local highways department is clearly run by cyclists and pedestrians who never progressed beyond pedal cars. Road humps, badly designed junctions, badly phased traffic lights, formerly 4-lane roads reduced to one each way by pinch-point islands, bus lanes and cycle lanes that stop and start at random.

Congestion achieved daily, I think that was the plan, to annoy us wicked capitalists who don't obediently stand around waiting for expensive and unreliable bus services like 'green' citizens.