Controversial truck praised for park outside KFC: 'Incredibly considerate'
While US-style pickup trucks have many critics in Australia, one owner has won some people over.
While drivers of American-style pickup trucks cop a lot of flak in Australia, one GMC owner's exploits have surprisingly earned them praise online.
The market for oversized utes is booming in Australia, but the fuel-guzzling vehicles and those who own them have their fair share of critics.
Often shamed online, that was likely the intention of one person when they shared a photo of the driver's GMC parked outside a KFC towing a boat. "You are kidding me...." they wrote.
In the photo taken in Devonport, Tasmania, the GMC can be seen parked across two spots divided by a walkway, with the trailer blocking access. And while others were also shocked by the move, particularly over how the driver made the footpath unusable, there was plenty of praise for their "ingenuity" and not taking up more spaces than they did.
"Ok so technically this looks bad. Must applaud his ingenuity though because most of these behemoth set ups usually park across six spots instead of taking up just two," one person wrote.
"What else was he meant to do?" another asked.
"What’s wrong with it? He has taken up two spaces, one for his car and one for his boat.." one comment pointed out.
"I am actually impressed by this," another said. "Love it," one wrote. One of the 400-plus commenters went as far as to call it "incredibly considerate".
Calls for big car tax
Monash University lecturer Julian O'Shea, who explores sustainable transport options as part of his work, is one of the many vocal critics of the surge in large American pick-up trucks.
He told Yahoo News Australia in August there would need to be significant changes to infrastructure to accomodate these vehicles.
"The question becomes, how do we use this space? If we want to make our carparks bigger, we get fewer of them, we lose space for bike lanes, we lose space for parks, we lose space for shops," he said.
"Some ideas that different countries are using that we could look into are higher parking fees for these cars, which cause more damage to the road because they're so much heavier," he continued.
"And just making more spaces available for other groups. So saying, 'look, if these cars exist, that's fine, but it's probably inappropriate for them to be around schools, or to be inside our CBD where space is at a premium'."
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