People Parking Next to Me

One of the advantages to having a car alarm with drone mobile is that most "door dings" are going to set off your alarm.....and alert you on your phone. I caught a lady hitting mine a while back. She didn't cause any damage, but the impact of her "lightly tapping" her door into mine was enough to set off my alarm, and I got paged so I looked out an saw her walking away from the car. I politely confronted her and went over and inspected the door. She apologized and that was the end of it, but for those of you who are overly concerned about "door dings", perhaps an alarm with remote paging will help you catch one of the jerks every now and then. It won't stop the ding, but at least you might catch the person responsible and make them pay for it. YMMV.
 
You can't prevent everything, but you can take steps to minimize/reduce how many dings you get per year.

My theory is this:

1) Never park up front. At worst, the self centered, lazy morons want those spots. This type of person couldn't care any less about anything outside 2 inches of their own body. Thus - vastly increased chance of door dings. At best, people with handicaps value those spots and while not malicious, increase the odds that incidental contact could happen if they need to unload/load bulky equipment to aid their mobility.

2) Parking further out - not a guarantee you won't get hit, but if the lot is not full, people parking out here tend to either have nice cars they don't want damaged, or they are at least not lazy and value the exercise of walking. This insinuates they at least respect / care about themselves, and increases the odds they may show some respect to your things as well.

3) Observe the lay of the land. Carts roll downhill. Park on top of the hill if at all possible, or on the downhill side of a cart corral (or any other obstruction that will not be moving while you're away from the vehicle.) Let that structure take the impact on the uphill side.

4) Expose as few sides of your vehicle to other vehicles as possible. End spots are great - especially if they're not in a major traffic route through the parking lot.

5) If you MUST park by other vehicles, look for those that are nice and well cared for. You can usually spot another "OCD" owner by recognizing they are parked in a manner in which you would park (such as crowding the line on the end leaving more room to the "exposed" side of their vehicle). DO NOT park by a beat up piece of crap! Odds are good these people do not care about or respect their own things, they WILL NOT care about yours!

So far this guide has served me well. I still get a ding here and there, but nothing major. I think I have two marks on my 5 year old truck. Wife has one on her 2 year old car, and so far the 4R doesn't have any. And fortunately, all of those marks are very small and hardly noticeable from 5 feet.


And I must comment on the "So what, it's not a Ferrari" train of thought. What's so special about a Ferrari? So it's just (a lot) more expensive. That doesn't mean everybody else should just resign themselves to driving a beat up piece of shit. And further, it also doesn't (shouldn't) mean that only filthy rich people's possessions are deserving of respect from others.

If anything, the guy driving the Ferrari can better afford fixing damage caused by inconsiderate people than the owner of the Camry can. So really, we should leave the Camry's alone and beat the crap out of every Ferrari we see!! :bounce:
 
Interesting that some don't care and others are just as OCD as some of us.
Almost sounds like a song....

Regardless, door dings can be a little like the broken windows theory....the start of the downward spiral. Best you can do is park far away and hope for the best.

If you do suffer a ding, there are plenty of paintless dent removal dudes who will come and repair from the inside out. I've seen some good repairs.
 
Leave it parked in your garage at home.

That's what I do... bought it in early September with 300 miles on the odometer, took it on a 4500 mile trip and over the weekend I just rolled over 5900 miles on it. But it sure is pretty.

I have a 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer that I use as a commuter vehicle, people can slam their doors in it at work all they want... all it'll do is probably hurt their tin can vehicles.
 
Remember, bad parking isn't only an LA problem...

OMG It is obvious this person should not be allowed to operate anything that can put anyone or anything in peril. It should be sent to the motor vehicle division to revoke their driving privilege before they hurt/kill someone or something.
 
Love the varied opinions, I generally don’t worry about it and if I see a nice car that clearly tried to park out in the open I have no problems parking next to it. 2 reasons, 1st I wish people wouldn’t sweat the little stuff in life so I want to raise their blood pressure and 2nd I am very careful when getting in/out so as payment for #1 at least I know they won’t have a ding on that side from someone else parking next to them. Generally the worst offenders are either really old beaters that no one’s cares about or the “old” people special’ (Buicks and Caddy’s….although that image is changing/changed). Most of the time the guys in new trucks or BMW’s are pretty careful or so I have found
 
That's one thing I loved about my 4th gen. Like all 4th gens, the doors are covered in flexible painted plastic, so most door dings are completely avoidable. Of course a taller vehicle next to you can always hit the metal and cause a ding, but after 11 years of driving my 4th gen, I had not a single door ding on either side.
 
Just get some sliders, which have the added benefit of being a good alternative to painted parking lines :)
 

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OMG It is obvious this person should not be allowed to operate anything that can put anyone or anything in peril. It should be sent to the motor vehicle division to revoke their driving privilege before they hurt/kill someone or something.

This doesn't normally happen, but watching that video made me want to turn violent. I seriously wished that someone would punch that driver in the face for the severe amount of stupidity. And to hit the parked car and then drive off is a really crappy thing to do.
 
Guys guy guys... you're all missing the obvious answer:

36963d1293324956-monster-4runners-monst4rs-pb050929.jpg


If the doors can't reach the body, they can't ding it! DUUUUUH! :P

and an exo-cage wouldn't hurt either.
 
And of course, there's always someone with a product ...

But what to do about ass rubs and mirror scrapes?
 

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An ass rub on your '94 would probably only help that old paint.

Dude don't hate hahah she once went 2 years without a wash or wax.... did the same thing in my miata and now the clear coat is peeling. My 94 paint looks as good as it did factory:afro: just need to make the side decals look pretty! Hell the oil based paint cali banned is top teir! I am pretty sure only trees and rocks can remove my paint
 

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