Ryan Bridge: I've had it with small carparks

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

Content provided by NZME and Newstalk ZB. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by NZME and Newstalk ZB or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

6d ago 1:59

MP3•Episode home

We should all be happy, the weekend’s finally here.

But there’s an issue of major national significance I need to get off my chest: I have had it with car parks so small, you couldn’t fit a shopping trolly in them.

What exactly do they think we’re driving? Go-karts?

No. People are buying big cars. Utes that cross the white lines. Station wagons that hang out the backend, blocking the road. Enormous SUVs that do both.

The Spinoff wrote about this the problem last week - the Civic in Auckland is one of the worst offenders.

Yesterday I saw a pregnant woman trying to squeeze herself, a handbag, and an unborn baby out of sedan in a carpark building. She was literally using the handbag to protect her belly from the car door.

Are we trying to send them into early labour?

Apparently new cars are getting 1cm wider every two years. People like bigger cars because they feel safer. We’re also getting way more obese so literally can’t fit in Honda Civic anymore.

Safety features take up lots of room. Side impact protection technically takes up a lot of space.

Are councils and Wilson’s doing anything about this?

Or are we expected to bend, fold, and stretch our way into our cars if we want to leave Westfield mall?

Are they going to pay for our Physio appointments? Should we take yoga classes?

Colchester Council in the UK this year spent a million pounds repainting the white lines to make their bigger. Good on them.

I have a theory: panel beaters, the global insurance industry, and parking building designers are actually criminal cartels, conspiring to make us all scrape and dent each other. Forget the Comancheros - they’ve got nothing on these guys.

One things for sure, we cannot let them win.

We must fight. We must band together and put a stop to this madness before there’s no parking spaces left at all.

Just think, our children couldn’t enjoy simple pleasures like visiting the mall.

Our grandchildren will grow up in a world where people just drive around all day, looking for parks, fighting over parks, then giving up and going home.

Is that the future you want for your family? To spend the rest of their lives in a car?

I sure don’t. So join me in this crusade for common sense.

Together we can help that pregnant woman. We can save our bad backs, our dickey knees, the elderly!

We can stop these crooked cartels.

We can start a movement to save the lives of elderly, injured, fat, and pregnant people, not just here, but around the world.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

4312 episodes

#New Zealand Current Affairs #NZME #Newstalk ZB #News #New Zealand