Trying to park at a mall is a soul-sucking experience at the best of times.
From a lack of spots to zero courtesy, it drains the life from people. Now, add in the holiday shopping apocalypse and you get a clusterbleep of epic proportions.
Case in point, this video a reader sent to me of some clown driving a suburban tank in Burnaby’s Northgate Village underground parking garage (it’s a tiny mall next to Lougheed Town Centre).
First, just look at how unnecessarily huge this vehicle is. I don’t know how any driver can see other drivers, cyclists or pedestrians. It’s a disaster waiting to happen and vehicle makers need to stop producing these blimps. They are too high.
The driver is stopped, waiting for a spot. One opens up two spots behind them and they obviously spot it. Instead of driving forward and around to safely get to the spot, they put their tank in reverse because they are afraid they will lose the spot. The other driver hasn’t even fully pulled out of the spot and they are already drifting backwards.
This tank is so big they can’t see what’s behind them.
What happens next you can see in the video, but it’s enraging. You see another vehicle’s white backing lights switch on and suddenly the tank driver backs up and stops in front of them. The vehicle that is backing up clunks into the tank. What's ironic is that no matter how bad the driving of the tank driver is, I believe that technically it's the driver backing up at fault because they drove into the tank. I don’t want to let that driver off the hook because if they were using their mirrors they would have seen the tank, but the tank driver is putting on a bad driving clinic. Neither driver is looking for other vehicles behind them.
It’s a clown show, only not cute or funny. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
