Taiwan's drivers face such an extraordinary range of traffic problems, from heavily congested roads to blatant disregard of lane discipline and traffic signals, that the inconveniences caused by double-parking can seem insignificant by comparison. This is a mistake. Rampant illegal parking can become more than a daily source of frustration, it has the potential for sparking something much worse. How so?
Picture this situation: You are following a minivan down a narrow two-lane street in Taipei when suddenly the van stops dead in the middle of the lane. The van driver opens his door, walks to the back of his vehicle, and starts unloading boxes. Worse, not far in front of the van are a couple of spaces where the driver could have pulled over to the curb. Furthermore, the driver has a provocative attitude: besides showing no concern about being ticketed, he hasn't even given you the courtesy of a glance, let alone an apologetic "Sorry." What is one to do in this all-too-common scenario, especially when a beep of the horn normally draws a returning stare saturated with anger over your temerity or an uncomprehending "What's your problem?"
In fact, there is a problem: "curb rage," a condition fostered by extreme frustration accumulated from the cavalier breaking of parking regulations, the seeming conviction on the part of other people that only their convenience is of any importance; and the apparent unwillingness of the police to put even a minor dent in the problem. It's a situation that could get out of hand.
The State of California was the first to document instances of "road rage," where motorists who had been cut off on freeways retaliated by pulling out handguns or automatic weapons and opening up on offenders. Fortunately, life on Taiwan's streets and highways hasn't reached that point...yet. But the pressures of urban life, mixed with inadequate enforcement of basic parking rules, encourages people to take things into their own hands. They give their own "tickets" in the form of broken taillights, scratching obscenities into hoods and doors, or letting air out of tires. At times, arguments with illegally parked drivers lead to fisticuffs and worse, as in the case of a popular local singer who almost beat to death a restaurant owner whose patrons regularly jammed the street with their parked cars.
True, illegal parking is a low-level sort of problem, and certainly not a headline grabbing issue when compared with rising concerns about violent crime. Nevertheless, the obvious increase in double-parking--especially as it so often occurs when there are nearby legal alternatives--is cause for concern. Widespread daily disregard for parking rules can put the public on a slippery slope that leads to a general disrespect for the law, the police, and other people. Curb rage already pits neighbor against neighbor, and this does not augur well for sustaining the habits of law and order that are essential for harmony in a free society.
A number of years ago, a revealing experiment was conducted in Los Angeles, and it has relevance here. The police "abandoned" a car on the street. Nobody touched it for a week, but then somebody broke one of its windows. Soon thereafter the car was dismantled and stolen, bit by bit. They called it the "broken window syndrome," meaning that if there are signs that nobody cares about a community, the crime rate in that community will rise. Other experiments have demonstrated similar results if graffiti isn't painted over.
Metropolitan areas of Taiwan are now facing what may be called the "double-parking syndrome." If people see that parking regulations are not being enforced, they naturally start to break them. Moreover, such flouting of the law is encour aged by the police themselves. Parking rules are only sporadically enforced, and the areas around police precinct offices are frequently packed with double and triple-parked vehicles. People see that the police appear to be uninterested in enforcing the law even at their own front door--so why obey them?
The fallout from this problem is intensified in Taiwan, because the proper balance between law and liberty is still in the process of readjustment, following the end of martial law a decade ago. Since then, people have enjoyed an array of personal freedoms not seen for decades, but a corresponding sense of personal and social responsibilities has yet to appear. Law enforcement, as a stimulus to forming habits, has a role to play in this process--one reason why parking regulations, which affect such a huge portion of the populace virtually every day, need to be enforced with greater dedication.
Respect for laws--and for those who enforce them--is the mortar of civil society. When drivers decide that their own immediate convenience takes priority over laws and the rights of others, it isn't such a long step for that attitude to exert negative influence on other actions. Society is healthy when the majority considers it a matter of personal honor to observe the laws--and if that means walking an extra block or two after parking every day, so be it. It's an attitude that can be encouraged by the police, but ultimately has to become ingrained. If left unchecked, the double-parking syndrome can grow into something much worse.