Tuesday’s Headlines: Sympathy For The Double-Parking Mercedes Driver Edition

Did you hear the one about the Mercedes driver who double-parked on a narrow Park Slope street, blocked an ambulance, took to Reddit to issue what appeared to be a neighborhood-wide apology?

“I am the idiot who double-parked on Garfield Place (between Seventh and Sixth avenue) this past Thursday around 6:10-6:30 pm and ended up blocking an ambulance trying to get through,” the post began, going on to explain how “I’ll just be a second,” turned into 20 minutes despite the honking ambulance. “I cannot begin to express how deeply ashamed I am of my negligence. I keep thinking of how long that poor ambulance and the person inside must have been waiting. I know regardless of how long the ambulance had to wait, that I caused real harm to somebody’s health and possibly worse.”

The Mercedes owner — yes, he ID’d the luxury car later in the post — was desperate to find out the results of his selfish act, though it was not initially clear if he was apologizing.

Some posters called him out, but the level of vitriol rose so quickly that, eventually, people were taking the side of the OP (Reddit-speak for “original poster”).

“You made a mistake and you owned up to it. That’s all you can do,” one person pointed out. “You’ll know better next time. Don’t let the chuds in this thread get you down.”

I’m not as sympathetic. Double-parking is, as its name suggests, doubly awful. It’s bad enough that drivers commandeer both sides of the residential streets in historic Park Slope to store their ugly (and very ahistoric) vehicles for free — aka “parking” — but to double that catastrophe by blocking the entire roadway is beyond the pale. (Full disclosure: When I was just out of college, I wrote a semi-autobiographical, self-indulgent, unreadable first novel called, “Hitler Would Have Double-Parked,” but I still stand by the title.)

In any event, feel free to join the debate:

In other news:

• Hey, Mayor, how about filling your vacant seats on the MTA board? (The City)
• High maintenance: Bridges that carry streets over subway lines are in terrible repair. (Gothamist)
• Here’s a total BS lawsuit challenging a city that allows residents to report commercial vehicles that are spewing pollution into the air. (NY Post)
• You’ll be seeing red and green as big changes come to the 2, 3, 4 and 5 lines. (amNY)
• Road squalor: U.S. Department of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy wasn’t content to merely punish New York for its public transit, its congestion pricing and its growing effort to spur bike use — he had to go and turn a family road trip into a reality program. (The Daily Beast)
• Wise move: Amazon now says it won’t sell illegal e-motos in California. (ABC7)
• Finally, a developer converting housing for cars into housing for people. (NY Biz Journal)
• Frankly, $10 million doesn’t seem like that much to spend on lawyers when you operate a subway, bus and commuter rail system spread out over a dozen counties. (NY Post)
• A delivery robot committed a hit-and-run that left a cyclist badly injured. (News12)
• Many outlets covered the mayor’s sort-of-underwhelming “Soccer Streets” announcement. (amNY, Streetsblog, Gothamist)