taking a risk and then complaining

I love how people go to the news with every problem they have with authority, justified or not.

The latest top headline on Kikar is about someone who went to RBS (the RBS C/Gimmel neighborhood, I think, based on the picture in the article, but not sure) for Shabbos and parked on the sidewalk. He woke up on Shabbos morning to discover that the police had ticketed his car on Friday night. He had received a 500nis ticket for blocking the pedestrian walkway.

The fellow complains that he had arrived right before Shabbos and had his elderly 90 year old grandmother with him who can hardly walk and couldnt find appropriate parking in the immediate area and the sidewalk there is very wide so he was not disturbing anything and parked the way he did and the police should not be giving him a ticket for that especially on Shabbos but should be fighting crime and dealing with the high number of break-ins in the area.

As if the police are supposed to know that he had a grandmother that could not walk. As if the police are supposed to know and discount that he showed up minutes before Shabbos and did not have time to look for a better parking solution. As if the police are supposed to take any of that into account anyway.

My approach on this time of crime, breaking parking laws and the like, is that go ahead and park illegally if you want to, but you are taking a risk of getting a ticket. 9 times out of 10 you might get away with it with no ticket, but don't complain when you do get a ticket - you took the risk knowing the chance was there that you might get the ticket. the sidewalk is for pedestrians and the street is for cars.

Should the police be dealing with illegal parking on Shabbos? I don't know. I think that might be new.

I would add that until recently I was not aware of the disturbance caused by cars parking like this, when it is a wide sidewalk. I think most drivers are not so aware of what pedestrians have to deal with and what bothers them, just as I think most pedestrians are not aware of what goes through the drivers mind and what challenges drivers deal with (such as pedestrians in dark clothing that are difficult to see, pedestrians that step out into the street with no warning, bikers and runners, etc). I was recently made aware of the difficulty some pedestrians have with cars parked like this when they have to deal with strollers or wheelchairs, and more somebody in crutches or using a cane that is not walking in a stable way and obstructions on the sidewalk and be a big problem for them even if there technically is enough space. On Shabbos especially maybe it is taking up space from where kids would be playing.

Anyways, as I said, park illegally if you want, but do not complain when you get a ticket. The sidewalk is for people and the street is for the cars.

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