In a survey of two hundred vehicles parked in the Kansas State parking garage, 18 percent of these vehicles were parked poorly. The only outlier was trucks, with over 36 percent not parked correctly in their space.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Jordan Eberhardy, sophomore in kinesiology, said. She said she believes that trucks are difficult to park and harder to fit between the lines.
According to K-State traffic and parking regulations, a vehicle is improperly parked when it is not within the lines of a parking stall.
The survey was conducted around noon when the ground floor of the K-State parking garage was full. All two hundred vehicles surveyed were adjacent to each other, in order to determine if they were parked improperly.
Of the vehicles surveyed, 108 vehicles were cars, 11 were trucks, and 81 were classified as “other,” such as SUVs, Jeeps and Hatchbacks. The vehicles parked improperly consisted of nineteen cars, four trucks, and thirteen other vehicles.
The survey also noted that there tended to be a cascading effect where, if one vehicle was over the parking line, the next vehicle would do the same. This would continue until a car that was smaller would park properly in a space, regardless of the lessened space.
Lindsey Proffit, junior in animal sciences and industry, described some of the difficulties she faces when parking her truck on campus.
“Being short and trucks being higher off the ground, it’s harder to park,” Proffit said.
She added that trucks are sometimes wider vehicles than what the parking spaces allow for.
A few trucks involved in the survey were so large that all four tires were on the lines. In these cases, if the truck was in the exact center of its space and pulled fully forward, it was seen as properly parked.
Josh Camarena, senior in mechanical engineering, said, “Trucks do take up more room.” He said he believes that the size of the spots are fine and that people do not spend much time worrying about how they parked.
