There's something that can change in a person as soon as they sit behind the wheel of a car.
Otherwise mild-mannered folk become aggressive with frustration at the first sign of what they might perceive to be dithering or delay. They might shout when they would never ordinarily shout and curse when their conduct is usually clean as a whistle.
I'm assuming the private hire drivers - I'd apologise for the stereotype, but come on - who careen about like maniacs are actually relatively decent in real life but a combination of the hustle and relentlessly having to be part of traffic turns them wild.
It's the illusion of power, I think, the suggestion of invincibility that comes from being at the helm of a killing machine. More people should think of their vehicles as potential killing machines, rather than status symbols or toys, and it might modify the roads a little.
There's also a little bit of the social media effect. People are more aggressive online because the screen acts as a barrier. The car does too - you are not toe-to-toe with your foe but a little bit removed and so emboldened to act inappropriately.
The car is king and those who drive are the king consort - of an elevated status by association, and this causes selfishness. People drive selfishly, they park selfishly, they believe they have an absolute right to their vehicle, anywhere, any time.
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Just look at any curbs introduced that affect car use. There is another anti-low emissions zone (LEZ) protest in Glasgow advertised for this coming weekend. What the turnout with be remains to be seen but the fact is, there has been concerted pushback on the issue and likely will be also when other cities around Scotland move to introduce their own LEZs.
Look at Rishi Sunak's attempt to appeal to a subset of the electorate who identify as "drivers" when he pledged last year to put a stop to "anti-motorist measures". Most measures are not anti-motorist but pro-people and pro-the planet.
The sense of entitlement that comes with owning a car extends to where one might want to put one's car. Any new on-street parking restrictions are always met with protest. People feel they must have the right to park immediately outside their home and anything else is a scandal.
It's astonishing how quickly, after all the sound and fury, people simply adapt to the new measures and the fuss is forgotten.
I say all of this and I say it as someone who is about to try to justify the selfishness and aggression of pavement parking. I also say it as someone who acknowledges her own hypocrisy.
Pavement parking is a truly dickish move. Using your car to block the pavement isn't only inconvenient to people with pushchairs and who use wheelchairs, it's also dangerous. You force people out into the road, sometimes into the path of oncoming vehicles.
Think about someone using a wheelchair: if there's no dropped curb handy then it can cause them to have to use a time-consuming detour just because you couldn't be bothered parking your car a little further away and walking to your destination. Even if that destination was your home.
Introducing pavement parking legislation makes ample sense. If being decent for decency and safety's sake isn't enough then drivers who persist in that manner should face penalties.
Edinburgh City Council has become the first local authority in Scotland to implement a pavement parking ban using new powers introduced by Holyrood.
It has said there will be no exceptions and exemptions.
What about places where there's no alternative but to park partially on the pavement? I can think of examples of where there is frequent pavement parking and where there is no excuse for it.
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In my neighbourhood in Glasgow's south side there are wide stretches of pavement where drivers - particularly van drivers - will bump their vehicle fully on to the pavement and leave it there, rather than park a little further away. There's no shortage of on-street parking and this is just flagrant selfishness.
In the next neighbourhood over, a more affluent area, the population is slightly less dense but there is far greater car ownership. The streets are lined with tenement flats built before cars, never mind mass car ownership. They were never designed to accommodate so many vehicles.
Alongside the flats there is also a bustling high street so the limited spaces have to somehow house the cars of shoppers and diners.
On the other side of Glasgow the city council has introduced residents-only parking and increased the price of on-street parking and this has made a significant difference to the area.
From very old housing to very new: a relative lives in a new-build housing association home where cars are always parked on the street because otherwise the road would be blocked. Each house has a single driveway but most homes have multiple car ownership.
I think of the couple where he is a taxi driver and she needs a car to get to work. Or another couple with three adult sons still at home. Or the gardener who has to bring his work van home.
Several nearby streets, of post-war council housing, are essentially one-way because cars entirely line one side of the road - there's no room to get by without cars being bumped on the pavement.
It's not a case of parking a little bit away from home and walking back - it would be 15 or 20 minutes' walk.
Should people without anywhere else to park be fined for it? The issue around the new-build estate is one of a lack of planning. Firstly of anticipating how families might grow. Secondly of a complete lack of public transport - the nearest train station is a 15-minute walk away and there's one shuttle bus an hour that runs a limited local route.
Grown-up children are living at home for longer because they can't afford to move out - this is a problem with the housing market. A lack of joined-up public transport is a relentless, ongoing issue.
A lack of on-street restrictions and sufficient parking spaces is a failure of urban planning.
There are strains on parking availability that cannot be solved by fining people. Before other local authorities introduce blanket bans, it would be prudent to look at root causes of the issue. Those, though, are well known but far harder to solve so it's infuriatingly unlikely.
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