Road Rules: Fitting into angled parking

Question: Can anything be done about these long pickup trucks that park nose-in along the downtown corridor? I’m most concerned about the ones with the steel trailer hitches that stick out into traffic like can openers waiting to slice open any passing car that gets too close.

Answer: Here’s something I find hard to wrap my head around: You could take your driver test in a Honda Fit and, with license in hand but no additional experience or training, be legally allowed to drive a 45-foot-long Prevost motorhome conversion. Think about that for a second and tell me we don’t have a gap in our driver license requirements. Fortunately, most of us are either wise enough not to do that or don’t have access to a 45-foot motorhome on the day we get our license. 

But let’s say you are driving around in a big motorhome. Just because you can legally drive it doesn’t mean you can legally park it wherever you want. That seems obvious, and I’m intentionally taking this to its most extreme possibility to make a point. We all agree that you shouldn’t angle park your 45-foot motorhome on the street, while it’s perfectly fine to do it with your Honda Fit. Somewhere in between there is a line where a vehicle becomes too long for some parking spots.

The exact placement of that line (and sometimes it’s a literal line) depends on where you are. Washington has something called the model traffic ordinance (MTO). The goal of the MTO is to have consistent local traffic laws throughout the state. Cities can adopt the MTO as written for their local code, or they can amend it.

The MTO has a law which prohibits parking “in such a manner or under such conditions as to leave available less than ten feet of the width of the roadway for free movement of vehicular traffic.” That sounds reasonable until you look up the definition of “roadway” in the law. In the title on motor vehicles, a roadway is defined as, “that portion of a highway improved, designed, or ordinarily used for vehicular travel.”

If we stick to that definition, we have a problem. A single lane for vehicle travel is typically between nine and 12 feet wide, so a normal two-lane roadway is roughly 20 feet wide. A literalist interpretation could conclude that blocking an entire lane with your terrible parking job is legal, as long as there’s 10 feet available in the other lane. I can’t imagine, though, that the legislators had that in mind when they passed this law.

Let’s work from the most rational interpretation and say that a driver can’t park their car in a location that leaves less than 10 feet of the adjacent lane available for other drivers. Do people with long vehicles carry a tape measure with them to confirm that there’s a full 10 feet?

Many jurisdictions have written their own parking laws. Some cities solve the “roadway” problem by using “adjacent moving traffic lane.” Some limit the maximum length of a vehicle (often 20 feet) for angled parking. That sounds long, but there are models of pickups that exceed that length. From a user-friendly perspective, my favorites are the ones that say an angle-parked vehicle cannot extend past the lines that mark the parking spot. It’s easy to understand, easy to know if you comply and easy to enforce.

For those who drive long vehicles, there are some places you can’t legally park. It may be inconvenient, but with your choice of vehicle comes an obligation to drive, and park, responsibly.

Doug Dahl is a manager with the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, Region 11 and publishes thewisedrive.com.