Holiday car door dings :(

[so called]

Drove down to Spain in my CLS this year as a change from my TVR.
Pleasure to drive down but she sure has suffered during the two weeks down in Spain.
Of the near dozen dings, one is, by far, the worse door ding on any car I've ever owned
Apart from the dent and paint scrape its left the paint of the offending car embedded.
I would love to be jumping up and down on someone's bonnet right now but .........

[M3Driver]

Simples. I never park close to other people, specifically for this reason!

I always take an end space, and park "far over", or I take two spaces further away and walk a little bit.

If I'm not happy with any of the spaces, I just drive a bit further away until I find somewhere I am happy with...

It works! My car is now 14 months old with absolutely no dings :-)

[MX-5 Lazza]

I used to do that but have given up due to the "car magnet" effect i.e. I park in an empty section of car park and when I return an hour later there is a car parked either side (usually a people carrier with kiddy seats - the worst offenders) parked either side of mine in an otherwise empty section. It's happened too many times to be coincidence.

[M3Driver]

Yeah, I suppose you have to just make an effort to do whatever you can in the situation, just that if I do park near other cars I will park as close to the wall or whatever at the end to give them as much space as possible to open their door without hitting mine.

If the spaces are simply comically small and unpractical, this isn't my fault. Therefore, another good tactic is to emply "line warfare", whereby you park right on the dividing line, where you are technically within your space, however you effectively render the other space unusable. If there's really no other option or lots of free spaces, I just take two.

Some people complain, but if you spend thousands of pounds on a brand new unmarked car, why should you put that at risk for a 30 min car park visit so that some d*ckhead with an old 5hitheap can wallop a big dent into your car which will be there forever??? I don't go round to his house and put big scratches in his Playstation, or slightly bend all his golf clubs, or interefere with whatever his pride and joy is...

The simple answer is that the spaces are too small. In the USA, and some Arabic countries, they have a line for the boundary of your parking space, and then a hatched void for room so that everyone can open their door and get out. I've no idea why we don't adopt that here, apart from in Costco where the spaces are brilliant.

[MX-5 Lazza]

Another method is to park as close as possible to a car on one side, so close that they can't even try to get in on that side. The problem with leaving a big space is that people then just swing their door open...

[58warren]

MX-5 Lazza said:

Another method is to park as close as possible to a car on one side, so close that they can't even try to get in on that side. The problem with leaving a big space is that people then just swing their door open...

...and then return to find a nice key scratch down the side of your car, because they're pissed off they can't get into their car via the driver's door and have to climb across the seat from the other side?

[so called]

The worst of the dings were done when we parked in a small but relatively empty car park which later filled.
In hindsight I could have parked at a metered street slot but too late now.

Still, I've been down in my Tuscan and used the same car park many times and not one mark.