Although park at the garage door of the house during the lunch break may seem harmless, it is grounds for a penalty if there is any type of restriction on stopping or parking in said place. This is exactly what happened to a man in New Zealand, who received a fine of 70 New Zealand dollars (about 35 euros) for leaving his car parked in the driveway of his own house during a stop of just 10 minutes to eat.
According to the New Zealand newspaper NZ Heraldthe man works as a salesperson in a food company and spends a good part of his working day in the car. On the day of the sanction, while in the car, he decided to stop at home during his lunch break to eat something quick.
He left the car parked in front of his garage, about a meter away, and went into the house. However, when he returned about 10 minutes later, he discovered that he had been fined for parking on a sidewalk with a bike lane, despite being right in front of his home. “He’s on the road a lot, so he stopped by to eat something quick and was here literally for about 10 minutes,” his wife explained.
He was parked for 10 minutes and the fine was processed in just four
His wife explained in the middle that he was very surprised and angry about the fine, and that, according to him, they had parked like this at the front door of their house on other occasions and had never had any kind of problem.
When reviewing the fine, they found that the violation had been recorded between 12:14 and 12:18 hours, an interval of just four minutes, a fact that also found it outrageous because the car was not causing inconvenience to anyone because it was parked right in front of the garage of his house and pedestrians could continue passing by without problem. “It’s 70 dollars, it’s ridiculous. It’s a lot of money for four minutes,” the woman lamented.
The authorities explain that the entrance to a house is not always private property
Despite the family’s complaints, the body responsible for traffic in the city defended the validity of the sanction because the car was parked in an area intended for pedestrian crossing.
As explained by those responsible, even if the car was in front of the house’s garage, that does not mean that the entire entrance is part of its private property, because there is a difference between the space that belongs to the house and the section that connects the street with the access to the garage, through which the sidewalk also passes.
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In fact, the authorities assure that the photographs clearly showed that the vehicle occupied part of the sidewalk and remind that parking is prohibited in these areas, even when it is the entrance to the house itself, because people who use wheelchairs or carry baby strollers may need the entire width of the sidewalk to move. If a car invades that space, they could be forced to go down the road to go around it, with the danger that this entails.