Why do you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?

Or, in the case of Poland, drive and park on sidewalks?
The photograph, by the way, is of a normal parking job in Prague. Notice how the car is NOT on the sidewalk.
Never in my life have I seen so many cars parked on the sidewalk. I have been witness to a few in Greensboro, but they have always been in the process of getting tickets written or they were involved in an accident that made them go up on the sidewalk. Never in my life have I seen people drive up on the sidewalk like it's normal.
Yesterday, I was witness to an astonishing event. A woman, I would say around her late 50s to early 60s, was walking down the sidewalk a little ways ahead of me with shopping bags in her hands. As I would come to find out, they were groceries and she was on her way to the tram stop so she could take her food home. Well, something happened, her bag ripped or something of a similar effect because a few cans hit the ground along with a head of lettuce (or maybe it was cabbage) and a loaf of bread. She cursed (some of the few words I've learned and can immediately recognize in Polish) and stooped to pick up her things. I hastened my step a bit to help her, but as I approached, a car pulled on the sidewalk moving far to fast, squealed to a halt before it hit her, and the driver proceeded to roll down the window and shout at the woman. The woman shouted back, and curse words were flying between the two.
Now granted, my Polish isn't worth much. Maybe I totally misunderstood, and the driver wasn't yelling at the woman for being in the way of his parking space, even though his gestures to his car and the sidewalk and the cars trying to get around in the lane behind him certainly indicated so. Maybe he was a really nice young man, and the woman was his mother, and he was frustrated that she hadn't let him give her a ride home. I have to admit, I've invented a bit of a game with the Polish people. Whenever I pass conversations in the market or in the street, I try to catch words and phrases that I know. Most of the time, I understand so very little what they are talking about. So I make up a conversation for them in my head. It's sort of like watching a television show on mute...the Polish people are very animated, and I love them for it. Hence why I created two scenarios that could be occurring between the young man and the grocery lady...Although, I don't think someone would swear at their mother the way this young man was swearing at her.
And that's not the first time I've seen a pedestrian nearly run over by an automobile on a sidewalk. I've nearly been a victim myself a few times. And I've even seen an car waiting at a crosswalk light on the sidewalk here....I was shaking with laughter when I saw that. I mean, it was a tiny car and all, but it still had no business at the crosswalk. My biggest question however was what the driver intended to do when the light turned green. Was he going to use the crosswalk to cross the street and get to the other lane? Or was he going to use it to turn out into his lane and resume "normal" car activities? If I hadn't been running late to class, I would have stuck around to find out.
Oh Poland, the many curiosities you house.....