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This guy may soon find himself transferred to a windowless office. -via Breakfast Links
Arturas Zuokas, mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, had enough. The mayor was so fed up with illegal parking that he took a spin in a Russian armored personnel carrier, crushing an illegally parked Mercedes along the way.
He said: ”I wanted to send a clear message that people with big and expensive cars can’t park wherever they feel like and ignore the rights of pedestrians and bike riders.
”It shows a lack of respect and won’t be tolerated. Of course, you have to have a sense of humour in my line of work and I thought this would be a way of drawing attention to the fact that the city intends to be proactive in its fight against illegal parking.”
That’s at least one driver who won’t be parking in the wrong place anymore. Link -via Arbroath
A time-lapse video from a security camera reveals a game in which the goal is to escape a parking lot. Why didn’t they drive through the grass? -via Buzzfeed
Twenty-seven-year-old Johno Lee, a British veteran of the war in Afghanistan, applied for and was denied a disabled parking permit three times. Meanwhile, he racked up £800 in fines for parking in reserved spots so he could unload his wheelchair.
Lance-corporal Lee, from Coddington, said when he first applied to Nottinghamshire County Council for a blue badge he was advised he was young and ‘may get better.’
His right leg was amputated below the knee after he was caught up in an explosion in Helmand Province in 2008.
He said: “I replied that they possibly didn’t quite understand the situation and that I thought it unlikely that my leg would grow back.
After the local newspaper the Newark Advertiser heard of his story, a reporter contacted officials who are now looking into the matter. The fines already levied against Lee have been rescinded. Link -via Arbroath
If everyone had to learn how to handle a stick shift, parallel park, and find their way around first, then the new automatic systems would be an assist instead of an excuse to drive without thinking. Let’s take a look at some ways technology does the driving for you.
The roads have already been laid out for us with painted lines, color codes lights and signs with pictures on them, all we need to do is stay in between the aforementioned lines, and try not put our cars into the back seats of other cars. For several decades now, a driver’s only technological distraction was the radio. Getting from point A to point B has never been easier, in theory.
From the Upcoming 
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One thing I like about living (and working) in the ‘burbs is that not having to fight for cheap parking or pay through the nose for expensive spots. Not so for people in Miami. Apparently, the scarcity of parking there has created much violence, a cottage industry involving the homeless, parking mafia and even a "magical meter fairy."
Gus Garcia-Roberts from the Miami New Times explains:
In 2004, Kendall native Xavier Cortes was a 37-year-old out-of-work actor in desperate need of a gig. Opportunity came in the classified pages of this newspaper, where an advertisement sought "an extroverted, fun individual, male or female, who knows how to ride rollerblades and isn’t afraid to wear a tutu."
Cortes immediately answered the ad. He was hired by the Coconut Grove Chamber of Commerce. He donned a hot-pink wig and matching tutu, carried a wand, and began each shift with $40 in dimes. For his wage of ten dollars an hour, paid each day by a different Grove business, Cortes skated through the neighborhood putting coins in meters that were about to expire. He left a calling card tucked under windshield wipers. "You’ve just been saved by the Coconut Grove parking-meter fairy," it read, and included a coupon to the business that had donated the dimes.
Cortes’s new occupation was the counterattack strategy employed by Grove business owners who felt under siege by MPA enforcement officers scaring away customers. [...]
Cortes was catcalled by construction workers and berated by teenagers, but to the Grovites who understood his purpose, he was a hero worthy of tips, cigarettes, and free meals. Soon though, he says, a cold war developed between him and MPA officers. "They would try to intimidate me, telling me it was illegal to feed another person’s meter," he recalls. "They’d try to figure out my routes and shifts. I’d see them hiding behind walls spying on me. It got ugly, and it went all the way to the top of the MPA."
Link (Photo: C. Stiles)
Some of these videos have been on Neatorama already, but some haven’t. Matthew Moore of The Daily Telegraph has compiled twelve of the worst and funniest parking accidents that can be found on YouTube. In the above video, a driver tries to pass over the undercarriage access space at an oil change business — but misses.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ
It seems that the St. Mary’s Church in Wimbledon village has maneuvered itself into a rather tight spot: church officials let tennis fan park their car on top of graves for £20!
The Church later apologized:
Reverend Mary Bide said that although the cars look ‘odd’, they were only parked in the oldest part of the graveyard and funds raised would make a ‘valuable contribution to the Church and the Diocese’.
But the church has since apologised for the car parking arrangement and has stopped the use of the churchyard.
‘Over many years, during the Wimbledon Championships, the parish of St Mary Wimbledon has offered this service to the public,’ a church spokesman said.
‘Each year three designated charities benefit from some of the money raised by allowing the cars to park and the rest goes towards work within the parish. Sadly, this year, some cars were parked in inappropriate places.’
Link (Photo: National Pictures)
