The Car Shelter: A Bane For Your Neighborhood Or An Amazing Invention?
Posted on février 25, 2013 by Frank
Nobody could discuss how much car shelters can be useful for car owners across the world. These installations have multiple usages: not only do they keep the snow from blocking your car in the morning but they also stop frost from attacking your car’s windows, which can save you precious minutes when you need to leave home. However, it is notorious that these shelters also cause a major pain to your neighbors: they are not particularly attractive and can be a nuisance for a neighborhood’s design. Here is the question for today’s debate: should we sacrifice the comfort brought by car shelters in order to make peace with its detractors?
A simplistic design that could be heavily improved
Let’s face it: car shelters look bland and do not blend at all with the façade of your home. Improving their design could be a fantastic business opportunity for a savvy entrepreneur, but as of today, not much was done to make them look better. The reason is quite simple: manufacturers probably want to keep lower costs in order to keep up with competitors, even though I’d bet that a lot of owners would pay a premium for a better shelter. Simple white cloth is usually used for them, even though we see a few variations in color from time to time.
Municipal laws to prevent abuses
Each and every city maintains different rules to try to make everybody happy, but a lot of them simply do not allow these installations to be there during the whole year. During summer, beautiful flowers will not be overshadowed by these pesky “Tempos”, as we usually name the shelters in honor of the popular manufacturer. In Quebec City, as an example, very clear guidelines have been put in action. It is impossible to install your car shelter before the 1st of October, and you will be fined if you remove it after April 30th. That’s still 7 months of suffering, but it’s better than nothing.
Your freedom ends where your neighbor’s freedom begins
While we wait for the better car shelters to be invented, it will be impossible to make both groups happy. We should decide whether or not shelters should be allowed by looking at the rights of “Pro-shelters” and “Anti-shelters”. Completely prohibiting their installation would definitely suppress some liberty from the owners of these car shelters, which would have a hard time finding another way to protect their vehicles from the snow. On the other side, we couldn’t say the neighbors are definitely losing any right in this situation: they indeed suffer, but that’s it.
In conclusion
I think it would be a better idea to leave the situation as it is right now. We wouldn’t want to face a small revolt from car shelters’ owners, do we? Let’s just hope we find a better way to fix their look once and for all.