Aydın Tiryaki (2025)

One of the most significant issues in cities is the inadequacy of parking spaces. In buildings renovated through urban renewal, solutions are provided for a specific number of vehicles by allocating certain areas for parking beneath the structure. These parking garages are generally located on the -1 or -2 floors, and access to these areas is provided via a rather steep ramp along the side of the apartment building. This incline is usually sufficient for vehicles to enter and exit and does not pose a major obstacle for drivers.

To prevent the obstruction of these garage entrances, restrictive warning signs or barriers such as delineators are placed on the road. In this way, an effort is made to keep the front of the parking entrance clear by preventing vehicles from parking parallel to the sidewalk. However, these measures are not always sufficient. Especially during the day, when there is not much activity in and out of the building, these garage entrances are used as temporary parking spots. As long as the residents of the apartment do not complain, these short-term parking instances are generally tolerated.

Nevertheless, a common behavioral pattern among those who park is striking: instead of driving their vehicles fully into the garage entrance, they leave them with only the front end pointing toward the entrance, while the remaining part occupies the sidewalk. Due to this habit, pedestrians become unable to walk on the sidewalk and are forced to step onto the road to continue their way.

The prevalence of such behaviors in urban life suggests that the psychological and sociological tendencies of those who park this way should be further investigated. Encountering numerous vehicles parked in this manner every day as a pedestrian and being forced to step off the sidewalk repeatedly poses a greater danger, especially for children and the elderly. Because garage entrances are designed to allow vehicles to enter and exit easily, it is also not possible to place physical barriers in front of them. Consequently, some irresponsible drivers, taking advantage of this open space, make life difficult for pedestrians in cities.

Perhaps introducing more serious sanctions in traffic laws against vehicles that block sidewalks, pedestrian paths, or crosswalks could contribute to the solution of this problem. Furthermore, officials who are quite eager to issue traffic fines should take more interest in these types of parking violations, and inspections should be increased.

At the root of parking on the sidewalk lies the driver’s thought of “I’ll be right back.” However, the concept of “right back” can vary from person to person; for some, it means five minutes, while for others, it could mean an hour. Yet, parking a vehicle on the sidewalk for even a single minute causes a pedestrian who wishes to pass at that moment to suffer. Therefore, this behavior creates a complete conflict between the justifications in the mind of the person parking and the needs of the pedestrians who want to use the sidewalk. While the pedestrian who cannot pass through the sidewalk is entirely in the right, the driver who says, “I couldn’t find a spot, I had to park here,” is definitely in the wrong.

By parking in this manner as a signal of the “I’m coming right back” message, the driver blocks both the sidewalk and the garage entrance. However, if they were to move forward enough into the garage entrance—where there is typically space for two cars—there would be no change in the problem caused for the garage, but there would no longer be an issue on the sidewalk. The psychological and sociological state driving them to this behavior can be explained by the thought: “The pedestrian will have moved away anyway, but an apartment resident might be there; if they see me and warn me, I can defend myself by saying ‘I just got here’.”

Although it is generally thought that providing behavioral training in traffic would reduce such problems, the fact that this improper parking habit is widespread even in areas with high education levels reveals that education does not show the expected effect on human behavior in traffic.

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A Note on Methods and Tools: The original Turkish version of this work was authored entirely by the author, without any assistance from artificial intelligence. (Note: AI was utilized solely as a translation and writing assistant to prepare this English version of the original text.)