Small nit: ‘double parking’ does not mean ‘parking in two parking spaces’. It generally means parallel parking next to a car that is already parallel parked - ie, parking roadside in a second row alongside a first row of parked cars.

More generally it refers to doubling up two cars in a parking space in such a way that one car blocks the other in (eg parking two cars nose to tail in a long parking bay)

At least in my region, the phrase is used about evenly to refer to both:

- Parking in the roadway next to the row of parallel parked cars/in other ways such that parked cars are blocked in

and

- Parking a single car such that two parking spots are obstructed (unjustifiably so, e.g. nobody would likely talk that way about an RV taking two parallel parking spots).

The difference in usage seems to depend on whether you (and your local cohort) spend more of your time parking in parking lots or on the street.

Double parking is a legal term for a specific traffic violation.

People who use it to refer to parking across two bays in a parking lot are using it wrong.

It’s like saying ‘well people in my region use the word “speeding” both to refer to going over the speed limit, and for going through a red light’.

People in your region have heard a term and misunderstood it.

Laws commonly include exceptions like;

> Vehicles used ordinarily for transportation of merchandise may double park for the purpose of, but only while engaged in, the expeditious loading or unloading

- that doesn’t mean delivery vehicles can park across two bays in a parking lot.

> People in your region have heard a term and misunderstood it.

Language is how people use it. That sounds like a perfectly valid route to adding a colloquial meaning to a word.

I’m as descriptivist as the next enlightened linguistic scholar, but this phrase has a specific meaning in traffic codes. Misunderstanding it is dangerous.

The initial mention of it in this thread was not in a legal context.

Presumably the same place they would park the Mercedes Sprinter that they would have otherwise that is about the same size. The people driving American pickups in the Netherlands are almost all contractors and they're a bit shorter and a bit wider than a Mercedes Sprinter.

> The people driving American pickups in the Netherlands are almost all contractors and they're a bit shorter and a bit wider than a Mercedes Sprinter.

I imagined all these people who are only a bit shorter but a bit wider than a van. :)

I would assume that if you go out of your way to have a company and buy a massive pickup that is more expensive than a Van and less usable you probably do not give a shit. The fact that they can basically ignore BPM on company cars is absolutely stupid.

Yeah but you buy a pickup for a work that you could not do with a van.

Pickups are for farmers, how do you carry pigs or a pile of dirt in a van?

You don't, you carry them in a trailer.

How do you carry them in pickup?

>how do you carry pigs or a pile of dirt in a van?

With less convenience and more difficulty.

I've done that kind of stuff, not great but it works. I can definitely see why people who don't very, very, very frequently need the enclosed cargo space prefer the pickups over vans.

Yup! Even when they could have fit it into a single slot, often they'll take two