We’re overdue for a look at Moron parking jobs, so let’s dive in. This first one was captured on camera by Roadguy himself, and while it wasn’t hideous…

… it was still annoying. Sure, pedestrians and people in wheelchairs and parents pushing strollers along the sidewalk could get around the truck’s rear end, but why should they have to veer at all when there was plenty of room for the truck to pull forward?

Speaking of pulling forward, our next item is from Roadguy’s co-worker Tall Mom, who writes:

Bad parking job!! …. As you can see, the entire back of the SUV extended into the space behind it so no one could park there. A couple of people, including me, wheeled in, because it was one of few open spots, then had to pull out and park elsewhere. People walked by and shook their heads.

Roadguy is shaking his head, too. Tall Mom decided to leave a little something on the windshield:

The note, she reports, said something like Please be considerate of others trying to park — or get a smaller vehicle. No one can park behind you!

Indeed. Nobody should get two parking spaces until everybody else has one.

Speaking of two parking spaces, our final item is from alert reader DizzyInCircles:

…When these two ladies parked their minivan in front of my condo earlier today [Sunday], I dove [for] the nearest camera to snap a shot. I even caught the offenders as they walked away.

While they were kind enough to leave the two handicap spaces open, I wonder if they realized someone with a chair lift would be unable to use either spot?

Excellent point. That marked-off area between the spaces is there for a reason, and the reason is not so that non-disabled people can park there — it’s because people in wheelchairs need the extra room to get in and out of their vehicles. In one swoop, the driver appears to have rendered both spots useless.

Roadguy can only sigh. But keep those photos a-comin’ anyway.

It’s a good thing Roadguy likes to read:

• Is commuting bad for your health? Today’s Strib reprints a Washington Post story that looks at the effects on blood pressure, neck muscles, the spine and more; click here for the Strib version, here for the original. (Also in the Post: a new traffic discussion group called The Carpool, and this column praising higher gas prices.)
• Is the U.S. building a NAFTA superhighway? It’s quite an image — up to 12 lanes linking Mexico and Canada — and even some congressmen are concerned, but top Washington officials say it ain’t so; click here for a McClatchy News Service story.
• Roadside trash: Convicts and volunteers are picking up more of the burden along Minnesota’s roadways; a Strib story is here.
• Rolling ahead: The latest issue of the Rake magazine checks out the ever-rising bicycling scene in the Twin Cities; click here.
• Crosstown construction: The Pioneer Press looks at the grim road ahead; click here.
• Unsure what to wear on your next road trip? Didn’t think so, but this story from the New York Times might still be worth a look — it’s a bunch of excerpts from a quaint 1950s how-to book called “Traveling by Car.” (Alternatively, several up-to-date road-trip tips appeared here in Sunday’s Strib.)

As always, your thoughts on any of the above are welcomed below.

Last night, while Roadguy was waiting for our friends at the State Capitol to agree on something — anything — related to transportation, he received this e-mail from loyal reader Mike:

This happened near where I live tonight — thought you might enjoy the pictures. Apparently a van parked or was driven into the parking lot of this strip-mall on Burns Ave. in St. Paul and either rolled or was driven off of the five-foot drop to the road below, right over the retaining wall. Unfortunately, by the time the police arrived, the driver had mysteriously disappeared. I didn’t see it happen, so I couldn’t be of any use to them, but I figured I’d be useful to you. It happened on the 1900 block of Burns Ave. (right near the intersection with Ruth Street).

Forward, reverse, brake, gas — they’re all the same if you’re a having a Moron Moment. Roadguy is just glad that no one happened to be standing at that fateful spot on the sidewalk. (For a wider-view version of the bottom picture, click here.) Apparently politicians weren’t the only ones teetering on the brink in St. Paul last night.

We begin today with an e-mail from loyal reader Becky:

I always encounter these Morons on the weekend at my local Cub Foods. The picture is terrible (courtesy of crappy-phone-cam), but the red/white sign clearly posted in front of this particular parking space says “Police Vehicle Parking Only”:

Are police driving purple Dodge Neons these days? I had no idea! Anyway, not a great sight to see at your local grocery store… the police having a reserved, front-row spot, just in case. But I’ve never had an issue there.

At least the sign doesn’t say “Reserved for Medical Examiner.” And who knows, the police may in fact be using purple Dodge Neons for undercover work, though parking them in the “police only” spot would probably be a giveaway.

Might the Neon have received a ticket? Roadguy asked our friends at the Minneapolis Police Department, and Sgt. Therese wrote back with this:

We can only enforce handicap parking regulations on private property. If it is any other kind of parking, we cannot take enforcement actions.

In a way, that’s kind of a relief — if Roadguy mistakenly parks in a spot reserved for pregnant women or “Scandinavians only,” at least he won’t end up with a court date.

Next up — a little something from Lovetodrivegirl:

I googled “How to Drive,” and lo and behold there is a website you can click into called “How to Drive Like a Moron.” You should read it. It is absolutely hilarious.

Roadguy checked it out just to make sure it wasn’t a copy of the Minnesota Driver’s Manual. It wasn’t, and he enjoyed this bit of advice from the chapter on intersections: “If you drive the same route to work every day, never use your signals because everyone should know where you’re going to turn.”

Lovetodrivegirl also had this to say:

Keep up the good work of keeping us entertained in Roadguy…. The only thing I don’t like seeing in the comments section is when drivers get so upset with other commuters that they tell how they’d like to shoot them. Driving is so much fun. People need to learn how to just get from Point A to Point B with a minimum amount of hassle. It’s not hard to do.

Good point, LTDG — we do sometimes fail to focus on transportation’s joys. And as CrapCam might say, “Shoot crappy pictures, not people.”

Speaking of crappy pictures, we conclude today with another of Roadguy’s failed attempts at relaxation. Last weekend, Roadguy’s buddy D.A. invited him to an art gallery reception in downtown Minneapolis. This seemed like a good way for Roadguy to unwind – he imagined himself gazing upon some abstract sculptures or moody black-and-white photographs of flowers. But no; the artwork had to contain…

… maps. So after snarfing down a couple of free meatballs from the snack table, Roadguy dashed back to his car and retrieved CrapCam. You can’t tell from these atrocious photos, but the art was pleasing to peruse…

… Plus, the artist, David Malcolm Scott, was fun to talk with — we bonded over the joys of snapping photos from inside one’s vehicle. (The exhibit runs through May 13; more info and vastly better photos are here.)

D.A. has suggested another art event for this weekend, and he swears he didn’t notice that the ads for it featured a large photo of a stoplight, nor that it’s taking place at an art center called the Traffic Zone. Is there simply no rest?

May your weekend, at least, be restful, safe and Moron-free. And keep those e-mails and comments coming.

“Hey, Roadguy, I’ve got a story for you” is usually how it begins, and it began that way the other day when a co-worker we’ll call Tall Mom stopped by my desk to offer a little anecdote.

It seems that, a few days earlier, while T.M. was driving along on 394, she did an admittedly dumb thing: at the last minute, she changed her mind about where she wanted to exit. Taking a quick look around, she realized she could get back over onto the main part of the freeway without crashing into anyone, so she crossed a few white lines and went for it. (As T.M. relayed the tale, Roadguy tried not to frown too sternly at her.)

Once she was back on the highway, a guy in a nice car pulled up next to her, looked over at her, held up one of his hands in the shape of a pistol, and pretended to shoot her.

It was merely a finger, and an index finger at that, but T.M. was not amused. She was even less amused a split-second later when, in the passenger seat next to her, her 14-year-old son used both of his hands to pantomime a machine gun and “shoot” back. T.M. quickly responded to her son’s behavior: “I reamed him out.”

There have been enough real shootings on or near our freeways that it’s probably not a good idea for anyone, grownup or adult, to be pointing even imaginary weapons at other vehicles. You never know how hot-headed the other person might be, or what he or she might have in the glove box. It’s not like the freeway has a big sign that says

And even if there were such a sign, it would be obeyed about as frequently as the rest of the traffic laws. (FYI, you can make your own freeway signs here, at a site called Kurumi.org.)

For a different type of motorist interaction, we now turn to another Roadguy colleague, whom we’ll call Como Park Traveler. CPT just got back from a trip to Europe, and she posted the following on her family blog, under the headline “A car crash in Paris”:

No, not the notorious one that killed Princess Diana. This was one that we saw while we were walking along the quai one afternoon at rush hour. We were looking off to the right, at the bookstalls and the Seine, when I heard that unmistakable quick BANG that means someone rear-ended someone else. So we turned to watch what happened next.

Both cars pulled over. The drivers got out and approached each other. I waited for the shouts. There were no shouts. No, the first thing they did was TO SHAKE HANDS.

I was amazed. Perhaps it helped that there was no big damage and no one was hurt — it was just a fender-bender. But it’s an annoyance nonetheless, it was rush hour, there was a lot of traffic, it was hot out, and even at its best this kind of thing is a major irritation. But the two men were extremely polite.

They talked for about five minutes, and just before they returned to their cars, I heard them say to each other “merci.” Then the drivers got back in their cars and went on their way.

Roadguy actually has a little French in his DNA, but it must be very little, because he didn’t behave nearly that graciously any of the times that Morons crashed into him. Maybe he should try to draw on his heritage next time.

Speaking of crashing Morons, we conclude today with these photos of a toll booth. The pics appear to be at least a few years old (click here for some attempted background), but copies just arrived in Roadguy’s inbox on Tuesday evening, so they were new to him. They fit in well with today’s theme of unusual on-the-road encounters — and given the New York license plates, there might not have been much hand-shaking or French-speaking at the scene.

If you’ve had a unique and/or memorable driver-to-driver interaction, or have a comment to share, Roadguy politely asks that you click below. Merci.

If you gathered up all the studies of every passenger rail, commuter rail and light-rail line ever proposed in Minnesota, and if you got a scissors and clipped out all the words from those studies and laid the words end to end, Roadguy is pretty sure they’d stretch a lot farther than the actual rail miles in operation.

But there are indications that rail’s prospects are changing, what with higher fuel prices and greater congestion, not to mention the popularity of the Hiawatha line and the enthusiasm for the Northstar commuter-rail project. The three proposals that Roadguy would like your opinion on today are:

• The Central Corridor light-rail line. A story from last week’s Strib is here; a PDF of an accompanying illustrated map is now online here; a Pioneer Press story is here.
• High-speed rail to Chicago. I already linked to a Strib column on the matter a week ago, but here it is again, and the system map that ran in the paper is now online here.
• Passenger rail service between the Twin Cities and Duluth. A Strib editorial supporting such a line was published yesterday; click here.

So, some starter questions: Which of these lines would you be likely to use? Are you willing to see some state money go toward them even if they won’t benefit you directly? Do you have ideas for improving the proposals? Please add your erudite and kindly worded comments below. (Links, too.)

Before we embark, however, Roadguy must quickly share this recent reminder that, no matter how many rail lines Minnesota eventually builds, motorists will still find them challenging:

Not only did this downtown Minneapolis driver ignore the green “straight ahead only” arrow and the two “NO TURNS” signs, but she cut across a double light-rail track and a traffic lane. Apparently it’s too bothersome to take 45 seconds to go around the block instead of making an illegal maneuver. Oh, well — at least she used her turn signal.

OK, train talk. Go.