Parking etiquette a matter of custom more than law

Jeffrey L. Seglin for the Orabge County Register, February 12, 2007

...Scott Latzky, a reader from Queens, N.Y., wrote to me about a similar experience. The differences were that there wasn't any colorful language involved and that he was not the interloper but rather the guy who had been waiting for a space to open up near his home in Jackson Heights.

One Sunday afternoon Latzky had been waiting for several minutes when another car came along and double-parked to wait for a second space to open up. On the crowded streets in his neighborhood, such jockeying is common practice.

After another five minutes, a car began to pull out. The other car, which was parked a little closer to that spot, began to go for it, but Latzky cut him off and reminded him that he had been waiting longer.

"He complained that he thought that I had gone for a spot further back," Latzky writes.

The other driver indicated that, when he had lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, whoever parked closest to the spot was the one who got it. Latzky reminded him that he wasn't on the Upper East Side and that this is how it works in Queens.

"He wasn't happy," Latzky concludes, "but he gave up the spot."

Latzky was in the parking space, but was he in the right?

He and the other driver both did the right thing. In matters of this nature, in which the law provides no guidance, local custom – not to mention simple courtesy – prevails. The fact that both drivers managed to avoid colorful language in sorting things out speaks well of them and of Jackson Heights...