We are facing a ‘perfect storm’ of giant gentrified tradies’ trucks — e g VW Amarok, a new entrant from Mercedes-Benz, and probably other luxury brands. Add to these the familiar giant tarted-up farm implements that have been around for years under various illustrious labels, and imagine them side-by-side in parking lots built in the age of the XM Falcon and the EH Holden.
Width is not necessarily any more of an issue than with a regular five-seat sedan (e g the Camry or Commodore mentioned by Bn) provided the vehicle is centred accurately between the marked lines. Tradies are generally very good at parking their crew-cab trucks accurately, but the same is not necessarily true of other family members still adjusting to the jump in size from the mid-sized hatchbacks to which they may have been accustomed. There will be similar problems with the giant SUVs that some may feel they need to maintain credibility in the school pickup queue or the carpool for Saturday sports.
I argued in my submission to the review of the NSW Strata Management Act that it would be desirable to add some sort of preamble to the Act stating an expectation that occupants observe not just the letter of their Scheme’s By-laws, but also the spirit of those that are (or should be) intended to facilitate living at close quarters and sharing facilities. That could include the unwritten rule, obeyed by most of us, that we park in a way that does not deny our immediate neighbours a reasonable amount of space to access their correctly parked vehicles. It would be a challenge to codify this in a way that will allow it to be enforced for those who take the line that they can do what they like with their property unless there is a by-law that says they can’t.