The Emirati Parking Style

The parking in the UAE is one of the few things that shocks me about this country. The country has so many rules and regulations for just about everything, except parking. It was particularly evident in Abu Dhabi. They park their cars wherever they feel like. It doesn't matter if that means blocking someone in or creating an obstruction on a busy street. When we asked a local if there is any punishment for this kind of parking, he said no. The policy is that if the way that someone is parked so they are blocking you in, you can call a hotline and they will call the owner to have them move it. If the owner cannot be reached, their car gets moved by the police, but not to an impound lot, just to another spot in the lot. Crazy!

An example of the crazy parking. This is at the hospital we work at. Car park
down the center of the aisle and the white SUV on the right is parked in a
non-spot (there is a big lamp post in the center of the spot).

One of the malls in Dubai has actually surprised me. They have a very innovative parking tool. When you enter the parking garage there is a large sign that tells you which floors have spots open; thats nothing new, we have that in the States. The cool thing is that at the end of each row there is a sign that has how many spots are available in that row. Even cooler, once you are in the row there are lights above each parking spot. The light is red if a car is parked in it and it is green if the spot is open. This is awesome because you can look down the row and quickly determine what is the closest open spot to the door. Very cool!

The green light hanging above the parking spot is an
open place and all of the red lights are taken spots.