By Fiona Chan

In a peaceful little cul-de-sac somewhere in the west of Singapore lives a family that is - almost - like any other.

They have a bunch of well-dressed kids, a lovely house and a garage that can hold three cars comfortably.

There's just one problem: The household has more than three cars. Quite a lot more. Seven, to be exact.

When the entire family comes home, as inevitably they do, their cars - marked by the same digits on all their licence plates - overflow onto the road in front of their house like a vehicular oil spill. They seep insidiously into the lots in front of their neighbours' houses, tarring their personal space and polluting their goodwill.

I know this because every time I drive over to visit my friend, who lives opposite this family, I have to dodge their cars while looking for somewhere convenient to park.

Of course, it's not illegal to take up parking spaces that your neighbours don't use. It's not even morally wrong for a single household to own seven cars (although I, the owner of half a car, think it should be).

But, to me, buying several more cars than your own house can accommodate is the height of inconsideration.

It's not like there isn't an obvious solution: Just sell one of the sports cars and use the money to build a bigger garage, for heaven's sake.

Then again, thoughtless motoring behaviour appears to be the norm in Singapore. In my own, significantly less wealthy, estate, many of the older single-storey houses are too small to shelter even one car. So residents park their cars right outside their houses, on both sides of the narrow road, along which runs a single white line.

This is actually illegal but the owners clearly don't care.

What they seem more concerned about is glaring at me as I am forced to inch my car through the obstacle course created by their protruding vehicles to get to my house.

I've never actually rammed into one of their cars. But I am always tempted to.

The same goes for all those foodies who park illegally outside eateries - even when there is a perfectly legitimate carpark just a few minutes' walk away - just so they can maximise their eating convenience.

The Sunday Times ran an article last week about how nerve-racking it is for these drivers to dine and dash. But it is 10 times worse for the rest of us, who have our nerves shredded trying to carefully squeeze past their obstructive cars, and don't even get to stuff our faces.

What I would love to do is paste notes on the dashboards of these parked cars and make them look like parking summonses, just to give their owners a scare.

"Gotcha, sucker!" these notes will say. "Next time it will be for real."

I don't quite have the meanness - or, to be honest, the balls - to do this, although my friends tell me they've stuck Post-it warnings on the cars they've seen illegally parked near their homes.

All I do, in a cowardly fashion, is live in hope that one day the traffic police will come knocking on the doors of these parking idiots.

After all, in Singapore, that seems to be to be the only way that anyone can be persuaded to do what in other countries would be plain common sense.

Take buses for example. You might think that letting a poor lumbering bus exit from its bus bay would be a natural instinct for other motorists.

But no, drivers have to be threatened with a fine before they will give way to a bus. Unfortunately, there's no penalty for drivers who grumble loudly and non-stop about the new law.

Do we really have to introduce - and enforce - punishments for every thinkable inconsiderate driving activity? Surely there is some shame in always having the obvious spelt out in the form of a law?

If there's anything I've learnt from years of kindness campaigns, it's that courtesy can't be taught. So I'm taking matters into my own hands.

The next time I visit my friend in his cul-de-sac, his neighbours better watch out. I'll be armed - with a bunch of Post-its.

fiochan@sph.com.sg

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