Should illegally parked vehicles bear some share of the blame in a collision?

[Resident]

If you park your car illegally or obstructively and it's damaged by a passing vehicle, should you share a least a small portion of the blame & have an 'at-fault' claim registered, using the logical argument that if you had followed the laws and rules of the road, your vehicle wouldn't have been there to be hit?

Do you think a shift into this way of operating would kerb illegal/obstructive parking? Would it lead to more collisions?

It's a thought that came about between colleagues as one had a minor scrape with a car illegally parked in a bus stop so the bus was force to pull up at an odd angle and as he left the tail caught the wing mirror, literally only folded it forward but now the car owner is claiming the vehicle is a write off (2017 Auris). At the time of the collision the car owner just pushed the mirror back into position and there was no sign of damage ever occurring. All on CCTV.

 

[Resident]

If you hit an illegally parked car and damage your vehicle/theirs, it's still your fault as you should have assessed the situation and done better imo.

The bus driver could have blocked the road to drop off/pick up instead of taking the risk of clipping the car. Sucks for everyone, but that's the fault of the illegally parked car.

Every day I see people parked where they shouldn't and you get people pushing their luck to gain nothing instead of allowing traffic to flow. Must be some reward to get to the next red lights 5 seconds quicker

Unfortunately it's not that black and white. If you've got an elderly/infirm/wheelchair user alighting then you need to be at the kerbside. If you don't and that passenger falls, you're personally liable as the driver and could face prosecution for negligence. (yes it's happened before)

 

[Resident]

Getting harder and harder these days the number of pedestrians who'll just step off the curb or even cross the road, with no previous hint they were going to do so, without looking. One of the reasons I have an immense hate for tailgaters and always try to leave a reasonable gap to the car ahead.

Amen to that and I'll add pedestrians that cross against a red man/wait instruction at a pedestrian crossing, whilst oncoming traffic has a green light.

But that could be a separate discussion all on it's own

 

[Resident]

If you're not able to adapt your driving to a stationary object then that's on you tbh. Funny enough I had this exact question on Barryboys many years ago and that answer will always stick with me. I can't argue it either.

I get that and it's correct.

I guess there's partly the thought that if people thought they were going to have to shell out directly (insurance excess) for parking illegally/obstructively.

You shouldn't be hitting stationary objects regardless of if they're illegally parked cars or not. I was always taught that it is the drivers responsibility to avoid hitting anything stationary.

However I do think that if you're illegally parked and committing any offence by doing so, then if there is an accident you automatically get charged/fined in accordance with that offence.

I also think (and this is probably going to be unpopular with some) that we need a lot more traffic wardens* and police dealing with illegally parked vehicles and vehicles obstructing the pavement, for example I keep seeing morons (nearly said something much harsher) parking completely blocking the pavement on a small roundabout near me, or completely on the path next to that roundabout and a pedestrian crossing blocking a busy path, the crossing and drivers line of sight as they come off the roundabout.
I can always tell when there is the one traffic warden in our town centre at a glance, it's the only time when there the idiots aren't parked everywhere you can possibly fit a car, and the taxi drivers aren't sat blocking disabled parking spaces (they're near the taxi rank, so you get taxi drivers who'll pull up behind the space blocking disabled drivers in/blocking the empty space sometimes for several minutes until they stop chatting and move).



*It's probably because I'm not in a big city, but whenever I've had interactions with traffic wardens they've tended to be fairly polite, although most of my interactions have been thing like asking about disabled parking (i'm always careful to check when i've got my dad in the car, and asking a traffic warden if there is one around and i'm not 100% certain of the local rules is always safer).

Maybe that's the solution

It's the same in the city that I work in. However for the most part enforcement personnel rarely go to the trouble spots, ones that just happen to be areas of high ethnic minority population.