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Dear Emily Poast,
As I got out of my car after loading my kid into the car seat, I was accosted from behind by a boomer who accused me of scratching her car, parked next to mine. Now, I did indeed have my door touching her car, since the spot is pretty tight and even my small car's door couldn't open to the first door check before it touched the car next to it, and it was basically impossible to get into the back seat with an infant while preventing the door from opening too much.
As it turned out there was no scratch on her car but we discoursed for a few minutes on the acceptability of touching other cars with your car door in the parking lot. In my view this is perfectly acceptable, and especially in parking lots with narrow spots if you have an SUV you shouldn't expect your car to be untouchable, though of course slamming doors into cars is unacceptable. Her view was that contact is never acceptable and she informed me that she raised two kids without ever touching another car with her door.
Seeing that we had reached an impasse, I informed her that I disagreed and drove off. My wife doesn't believe I did anything wrong, but she herself would never touch another car with her door.
What do you think, Emily? Is it acceptable to touch another car with your car door?
— Well-formed
If your car's door must touch another car in order to let you in, there is not enough space there to park safely. Drive around until you find a better parking spot, ideally three empty ones in a row so that you can safely park in the middle. Parking spots are like urinals; you don't want to be next to anybody.
If you were already parked there and she is the one who parked her car so close to yours, then it is she who is at fault.
This is a fairly popular place, so you'll be waiting until closing time to find three adjacent spots.
I did indeed park before she did and with no car in the spot she later parked in, but both cars were in the middle of their respective spots, so I can't fault her for parking in an open space.
You did nothing wrong. If anyone's at fault it's ordinances and laws that mandate minimum parking bay size in your area.
When I park in those sorts of 'squeeze into your seat' spots, I'm very careful to not bump my door into theirs. In the worst case I will manually place my door against theirs very carefully and then squeeze in. There shouldn't be a way to scratch doing this unless they have a shoddy paint job.
People are crazy in that they somehow believe our code of laws are somehow actual physical laws of the universe that can never be violated, instead of just words written by fallible humans that could not foresee all possible circumstances.
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