(no subject)

[jack]

I never really thought about it, but I realised I fairly habitually see people parking on double yellow for short periods of time, and assumed it was normal and hence ok, but I _also_ assumed that it was forbidden so you should never do it. And hence, I implicitly assumed that there was some magic circumstances that everyone else knew that made it ok, but I never knew. It never occurred to me that maybe people were just wrong.

Comments

[simont]

Am I right in inferring from this that the law draws no particular distinction between waiting in your car (perhaps even with the engine running), and parking your car and wandering off elsewhere? You imply (unless I've misread) that the latter still counts as 'waiting', which suggests they're considered equivalent.

I'd have thought common sense would suggest quite a big difference between the two when it comes to parking restrictions, because parking restrictions are largely concerned with not obstructing other uses of the road, and if a car is potentially obstructing something then it surely makes a big difference whether the driver is sitting right there ready to move it at need.

[jack]

That's what I thought, but from my previous asking, it started to sound like that might make sense, but isn't actually officially endorsed anywhere.

(In which case, it might be the sort of departure from traffic laws which is actually morally ok, whether or not you're likely to get done for it, if you know you can get out of the way if you need to, and the road isn't permanently blocked by such idling cars.)

[gerald_duck]

So far as I can see, if there's nobody in the car it's definitely Stopped, but having someone in the car doesn't mean it's not Stopped.

To pick an extreme example, nobody thinks it's legal to cook lunch in a motorhome in a pay and display bay without buying a ticket, even though the driver remains in the vehicle throughout.

Personally, I'd say the only way it makes a difference whether or not the driver is present is when considering whether or not the vehicle is causing an obstruction. For example, before now I've stopped on a quiet single-track road to consult a map. Nobody could get past in either direction, but I was prepared to move off at a moment's notice if anybody arrived. I think that means I wasn't causing an obstruction. If I'd instead left my car there while I went to spend the evening in a nearby friend's farmhouse, the police would rightly have my guts for garters.

[highlyeccentric]

Australian road rules make a simpler distinction: "no parking" means you cannot leave your car there, nor may you sit in the car for more than two minutes; "no stopping" means you cannot pull up there at all unless there's an emergency or something. There's no category of "you can pick up people but not goods". Presumably if your goods take more than two minutes to unload you have to find a parking zone.

There used to be an additional category of "no standing" in NSW, but i can't remember how or if it differed from No Stopping.

[jack]

That makes a lot of sense!

[hairyears]

There's no distinction in the letter of the law between a parked car with no-one in it, and a stationary vehicle with a driver - even if the engine is running.

However, the enforcement of the law is very different: unattended vehicles on double yellow lines get ticketed immediately, but in all other circumstances the enforcement officer (usually a traffic warden) must establish intent. That is to say: they wait 3-5 minutes for some activity that looks like loading, picking up, assisting a disabled person, or essential road-safety activities like checking the boot is properly closed.