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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.




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