Talal Qashqari

Al-Madinah

The other day, a Saudi man asked me to visit his neighborhood. The buildings in that district are old and there is hardly any space to park cars. As the number of the residents is large, local people have begun to park their cars on the central reservation area of a nearby main road. The nearest parking spaces available are located miles away. Most of the residents are old and cannot walk that far. Residents parked their cars on the central reservation for years until the traffic police one day decided not to let them do so.

Traffic officers issued fines to all of the cars parked on the central reservation area of the road. People were shocked when they received SMS messages that they had been fined for illegal parking.

I am not writing this article to ask traffic officers to exempt these residents from paying the fines. I instead want to stress that the residents are not guilty of illegal parking. If anyone is guilty, it is the municipality that has failed to plan roads properly and has provided insufficient parking spaces.

Traffic officers have lately been focusing on fining drivers instead of insuring a smooth flow of traffic. The Traffic Department is not working with the municipality to fix streets, which are the main reasons why drivers are given fines.

Moreover, parking a car on the central reservation area of a road in most countries is allowed as long as traffic is not disrupted.