KFC customer's 'selfish' parking act as 'Yank Tank' trend booms
The large ute was spotted taking up four parking spaces at a busy Melbourne KFC restaurant.
The market for American-style pickup trucks is booming in Australia, but their owners' penchant for taking up several parking spaces has fellow motorists seeing red, leaving the vehicles to become one of the most hated in Australia.
In the latest incident, a vehicle was spotted in a KFC car park taking up not one, two, or three spaces, but four because the driver had parked longways. To add insult to injury, the photographer said it was rush hour at the fast-food restaurant and the store was overrun with customers.
"KFC Mooroolbark this evening, 7pm car park crowded, drive-thru out into the street and a shop full of people with the typical 20-30 [minute] wait," the incensed Melbourne man posted online. Facebook users slammed the motorist's move, saying he "surely could have just reversed in close to the KFC sign". Others called the driver a "selfish a**hole" and "drop kick".
Rage rising among drivers
Aussies have been venting their rage at these oversized vehicles taking up so much space for months now. In August, one frustrated driver posted a photo of an extra-large Ram ute parked across two car park bays in front of a row of shops. "The size of these things is getting a little silly," he wrote on Reddit, while others complained that Australian cities don't have the room for such large vehicles.
What can be done?
Aussie backlash against the vehicles has spiralled as more American-style models are imported in, despite rising prices at the fuel pump and greater awareness of how vehicle emissions are hurting the environment. According to Shell Australia, almost 8,000 American-style utes were sold in Australia in 2022, with that number set to rapidly rise this year.
The trend has now sparked calls for new policies to be introduced to address safety and environmental concerns, with SUVs the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO2 emissions since 2010, according to the International Energy Agency.
Monash University lecturer Julian O'Shea, who works on sustainable transport options, says there would need to be significant infrastructure changes to accommodate more of these vehicles. "The question becomes, how do we use this space?" he previously told Yahoo News Australia. "If we want to make our car parks bigger, we get fewer of them, we lose space for bike lanes, we lose space for parks, we lose space for shops."
Meanwhile, the huge vehicles aren't any safer for road users. "Due to the shape of the vehicles they've got this flat grill that means if you get hit by one, you're more likely to be hurt and injured," he said. He added that the visibility for those behind the wheel of large SUVs is also "really poor", making it hard to see people on the street.
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