Barnaul authorities placing heavy concrete beams onto the ground in front and behind an illegally parked car.
Finding a parking spot can be a nightmare in Russia, as any driver can attest. But sometimes the even bigger problem is when drivers park illegally: at bus stops, on sidewalks and in no-stopping zones along busy streets.
A Siberian city apparently decided it had had enough this week when a driver decided to park his car in the middle of a freshly dug flowerbed.
Instead of towing away the dark sedan, municipal services in Barnaul dispatched a truck that placed heavy concrete beams onto the ground in front and behind the car, blocking it in, according to a video published Tuesday on YouTube.
A municipal truck can be seen carefully lowering the beams in the video, which was apparently filmed from a top floor of a nearby apartment building. The camera operator and another observer can be heard praising the truck driver for his work.
"This is how they are fighting against those who park in flowerbeds," a male voice says.
After the truck lowers the second beam, he says, "They've blocked it in."
"Great work!" a female voice says appreciatively.
A small group of onlookers are clustered around the flowerbed, watching the unusual crackdown on illegal parking.
What happened next is left unseen. But usually when a car is targeted for illegally parking — often by being towed or blocked with wheel locks, not concrete beams — the owner has to pay a fine to regain access to the vehicle.
Illegal parking is a huge headache across the country, and Moscow authorities have cracked down on the problem in recent months amid a drive to ease the city's notorious traffic jams.
Nongovernmental groups have also joined in.
Last month, Russia's top elections official apologized after a co-worker was caught on video threatening and cursing out a group of activists who had blocked her from illegally parking her car.
Shortly before the Victory Day holiday this month, a photo went viral online that shows an illegally parked car with the phrase, "Thank you, Gramps, for the victory!" Below the phrase, someone tacked a note, reading, "Let Gramps use the sidewalk."
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