parking problems and solutions

If you've ever looked at your dog and thought, wow, your life is great, what I would give for my life to be that easy. Well, I believe we can learn from dogs, and I'm writing a blog, with my dog Daisy, to teach people how to make life that easy.

Actually I started this blog to sell my e-books Jackpot and The Band, but that has now turned into a side gig.

Post for post Daisy and I are tackling life's challenges and world problems.

This is Discussions With My Dog.

The problem

In an ideal wording parking would not be a matter for discussion. It would just happen. In reality finding a parking space in a place you want to park, at the time you want to park, can be a bloody nightmare. The problem has been partly solved with the invention of the multi-story carpark, but there is a catch – “An hour’s parking at Gatwick Airport? Thank you Sir, that will be £8. Please come again”.

The day after New Year, we decided to take Daisy to a beach that was about an hour’s drive away. The main carpark was partly shut due to flooding.  Although there were other carparks in the area we could not find a single space near the beach. Fortunately, we found a layby about a mile away and took Daisy for a walk over the golf course so the day wasn’t a total washout.

The underlying problem is too many cars and not enough road or carparks.

The solution

This can be resolved by technology – not science fiction, but technology we already have. We can manufacture autonomous vehicles, cars that drive themselves. 

“What if they cause an accident?” I hear you say. Fact - cars driven by computers are far safer than cars driven by people, unless you programme the cars to drive like boy-racers or some of the absolute cretins I see on the roads.

Take for example our day trip to the beach. You book an autonomous vehicle, it comes to your house at the appointed time, takes you to your destination and heads off to the next customer. The need for a massive carpark has been replaced by a small drop off zone. Use you mobile to order a return journey, in two hours you will be taken home in another autonomous vehicle.

In fact, I don’t even need to go myself. I can book a car to take Daisy to the beach by herself. I can also book another car to go and find out why Daisy didn’t get in the car that I sent to collect her.

So, if the technology is there why are we all still spending half an hour driving round a carpark looking for a space? 

There are reasons.

The problem with the solution 

Daisy has no interest in going for a walk by herself. Millions of years of doggy evolution has taught her that it’s something we do together. It’s good for me to get some exercise, otherwise I would just be loafing around the house looking at Youtube or writing more shite like this blog.

Daisy has standards. Like people, she has a preference for the type of vehicle she wants to travel in. How could she ever go the park or the beach in a vehicle that looks like this? 

The main reason why autonomous vehicles won’t catch on any time soon is the owners of Multi-story cars parks are secretly paying small fortunes to the designers of driverless cars to create vehicles that look like something Nobody would drive.

Alastair and Daisy

p.s. check out some stunt carparking clips like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RHXg5s7wv8