Next time you find yourself a victim of double parking or unable to fit into your space because your neighbour has parked outside the lines again, send a thought to the poor drivers of Kazakhstan and it may make you feel a bit better.
A new website looking to expose the appalling parking habits in the Central Asian nation has skyrocketed in popularity bringing the country’s drivers to shame.
The pictures on the site called ‘I Parked Like An Ass’ show vehicles parked in the middle of the road, in flowerbeds, dreadfully double parked and even one stretch hummer limousine blocking an entire lane.
Good ef-Ford: One driver thought the pavement was the perfect place for his car, and another one followed suit
Paeony parking: Clearly not even flowerbeds are safe when the Kazakhs need somewhere to park their cars
The website was set up by disgruntled
driver Roman Slegin in the city of Almaty who wanted to give Kazakhs a
channel where they could embarrass fellow countrymen who seem to have missed the parking lesson in driving school.Mr Slegin, who has three staffers for his site publishing photographs sent in by the public, said the terrible parking habits are common in his country.
‘I Parked Like an Ass, or ‘Я паркуюсь как осел’ as it is called in Russian, has over 1,500 photographs published, a number which is growing rapidly.
The website has become so popular that Almaty police have offered to verify the photos and ‘bring charges against persistent offenders,’ Radio Free Europe reported.
Donkey parking: Parking properly was clearly just too much of an effort for these drivers
When there was not enough space to park it seems
continuing to drive until he or she found some was not an option for
the driver of this white stretch Hummer who is blocking an entire lane
Speaking the truth: The appalling parking habits of Kazakhstan has been exposed by a website called 'I Parked Like an Ass'
It seems the law of the jungle rules the streets of Kazakhstan where a car parked on pavements is a common sight.Kazakhstan has a passenger car ownership rate of 0.167 per capita with 2.7 million cars between 16.5 million people.
Max Fisher, associate editor at American magazine The Atlantic blogged that the insane parking could be explained by the country’s sudden economic growth and urban development.
He writes: ‘The skyrocketing GDP and fast-developing economy have led many Kazakhs out of the vast and sparsely populated countryside - where parking anywhere and any way you please would be less deleterious to traffic - and into the rapidly growing cities.’
Anywhere will do: A car is parked dangerously
close to an oncoming tram and another on a zebra crossing forcing
pedestrians to walk around it
Pavement fail: The website exposes the atrocious
parking habits of some Kazakhs and currently has 1,500 photographs of
bad parking examples
Too close for comfort: A silver motor has wedged itself in between two cars
He
also mentions the country's rich oil and gas reserves, the profits of
which has helped the development not just of the economy but also
increasing the number of cars.‘There are a lot of cars and city-dwellers in a society that didn't have many of either only a generation ago, meaning that the idea of city parking itself is kind of new, and the practices that we consider normal might not have had an opportunity to develop.’
For more examples of crazy Kazakh parking visit http://www.oselparking.kz/
Buy-one-get-one-free: This Mercedes driver gives the term double-parked a whole new meaning
Nice! The type of odd-ball parking on the site
would get two thumbs up from Borat - 'Kazakhstan's cultural attache' to
the U.S. - played by Sacha Baron Cohen
No comments:
Post a Comment