Parking outside MY house

[Salu]

How do you approach the subject of members of the public that aren't your guests parking outside your house, not blocking your drive on the road?

They are perfectly entitled to do this yet some people feel quite territorial about this.

Where do you fit in? Are you a defender of your realm or have an easygoing approach?

There will be those who rarely have this problem and those who live near train stations etc who get it everyday. Does that change your approach?

If you don't have a driveway then maybe you feel more indignant that you can't park outside your home yourself?

[Halcyon]

I live on a road with grass verges and I can't stand one of the neighbours who even though has a big drive way, parks his vehicles on the grass. It has totally messed up the grass and it is now just a pile of mud.

You would think people would want to respect the area they live in and keep it a nice place but some people just don't care.

We've even had people park on the grass and then as they drive off there is a huge hole in the grass and mud tracks everywhere.

I feel like going and telling them to move but havent done so as they will just blab about it being public right of way, etc.

I also have a friend who lives near a school. He often can't get out his drive as it's blocked by Mum's in their huge range rovers that have parked to pick up their children.

[Paul]

No choice where we live Too many cars for the street to sustain, very few houses with off road parking and a lot of people with multiple cars or works vehicles. Some days we are lucky to park in the street at all.
During school time it's worse in the morning and afternoon due to the fact we have a school at one end of the road and the other end of the road is good for parking for the local station. The local borough council is putting a parking permit system in for residents soon, already tried once but the people with multiple cars and works vehicles refused to clear the road so that the parking bays could be re-marked. W*nkers that they are

[Stuart]

I can't drive, so am not really too bothered (although it is nice for friends and family to be able to park outside the house).

However, one thing that does p me off is that two of my neighbours appear to have adopted the space as theirs. I wouldn't mind too much, but they both have garages (I don't). They can't use them for storing cars as they have all sorts of other cr*p in them. It's not as if they are small garages either. One has a garage so large that the neighbour who had it built had enough room for an estate car AND a fairly well-stocked workshop.

[gazzae]

A guy near us sometimes parks his lorry outside out house which ****es the missus off no end. It spoils the view she says. The view being the gable wall of the house opposite.

[MikeyB]

Originally Posted by Salu

How do you approach the subject of members of the public that aren't your guests parking outside your house, not blocking your drive on the road?

Don't personally mind, it's not my road, so they can park there... unless...

I have had someone block me out of my own driveway, they had parked right across it.
What do some people think when they park (oh, they don't think!!!) As I live at the end of the street I managed park my car so they couldn't get out themselves, and of course, who do you think complained the most.... And no apology for blocking my driveway.

And on another occasion my Dad was round and parked his car in the small 2 space parking area at the end of the road, and someone else parked behind him in a big 4x4 blocking him in, crazy!!!! Of course they just moaned when we asked him to move it, like it was causing him lots of trouble.

But every house in the street has a driveway for at least one car, some have a long enough drive (like mine) for two cars, and yet some people never use them, including my next door neighbour.

[Jason1]

It drives me bloody bonkers I live just off a main road with a row of shops. All the tight fisted people out there park in our car park, instead of paying at the meters.

Most would park within 1 meter of my front door. I Got so peeded of I used to knock off there rear view mirrors. Didnt work though still had of freeloaders parking there. In the end I got onto the council and got them to put some nice big black bollards which sorted it.

[TheNorm]

In our previous house the whole road was on-street parking, which could make it difficult to find a space near your house. Not fun when you have two pre-schoolers and a load of shopping to deal with. The parking was made even worse by one "unemployed" neighbour who seemed to run a used-car business from home. I remember he was visited by the local constabulary one evening - the next morning, there were plenty of parking spaces! This only lasted for about a week, though.

We then moved to a house with a double garage - excellent! However, over the years I've noticed an increase in the number of cars parked on the street. Our neighbour gets irritated by a guy who parks his van next to his house, blocking much of the light. Sometimes he puts his own car there (and leaves his driveway empty) just to stop this.

I understand how annoying it is to have people park outside your house, but sometimes people have little option. A side-effect of the mismatch between towns built during the era of the horse-drawn carriage, and people's "need" for two (or more) cars.

[Maggy J]

I don't mind.That is I don't mind until I've a car full of weekly shopping and I cannot park outside or even near to my front door to unload it.I'm then left humping bags up the road from my car parked at the end of the road or worse round the corner.

Wouldn't have even been so bad if the council hadn't put down double yellow lines on the opposite side of the street because then I could have parked across from my house and then moved the car somewhere sensible afterwards.Now if I want to do that I have to keep a weather eye out for the local traffic warden who is a fiend.

[Nugget]

It drives me absolutely up the wall if people park outside my house

We have to buy a permit to park on our street (it's only 15 quid a year, but it's enough), but the amount of times I get home in the evening and can't park anywhere, let alone further up the street because it's full of cars without permits

Christmas is the worse, because we only live about 200 yards from the centre of town, so the cars can be 3 deep by the time I get home because of Christmas shoppers. Having said that, I just block people in now

[Gareth]

I don't mind it.... prolly cause I'd be a hypocrite if I did, as I tend to be guilty of doing it myself.

Where I work, the council won't allow us to increase our car park. There is already more cars for the number of spaces, and even introducing a "car sharers only" car park (which is itself impractical for people like me who can do different shifts) isn't helping... plus we're recruiting yet more people!

Needless to say, there's a large amount of parking on the roads near our office. I do it myself if there's no spaces left. It annoys the residents, who moan at my company, but there are no double yellow lines, and I pay my road tax, so I continue to do it.

[basa]

So it looks like population control is working then !!!

Too many people, too many people with too many cars !!

[Jules]

I live opposite a school and it is a nightmare in the morning and afternoons when the "school run" is happening, they either block you in or nick your space before you are out of it!

[Flobajob]

Originally Posted by Salu

How do you approach the subject of members of the public that aren't your guests parking outside your house, not blocking your drive on the road?

They are perfectly entitled to do this yet some people feel quite territorial about this.

Where do you fit in? Are you a defender of your realm or have an easygoing approach?

There will be those who rarely have this problem and those who live near train stations etc who get it everyday. Does that change your approach?

If you don't have a driveway then maybe you feel more indignant that you can't park outside your home yourself?

We have our own driveway so people can park where they like outside the house so long as they're not obscuring it, which would be a mistake on their part as a good friend of ours owns a tow truck and breakers yard just down the road. I can see people losing their rag if they don't have their own driveway and people are parked outside their house but short of finding out who owns the car and asking them politely to move it there's very little the can do.

[ZrByte]

For me it depends who is parked there. If its someone going to one of the two shops at the top of the road I dont really mind as there is no parking there. If it is someone from the next road or visiting one of our neighbours I dont really mind as long as they are considderate. Some of these park thier cars strategicly so as to take up at least two spaces or even four if they have two cars. Wich is obvioulsy really annoying if we cant get either of our cars outside the house just because one car is parked there.
Another annoying habbit of our neighbours is to invite friends/relatives down for several weeks at a time who only use thier cars to get to the house in the first place, so instead of getting them to park outside thier own houses and displacing thier own cars for a couple of weeks they just let them park outside of ours. People from the next road also have a habbit of parking either thier own cars wich they only use for work or works vehicles outside of our house on a friday after they finish and leaving them there until either the Monday or Tuesday when they finally go back to work. I dont mind this when they have no space outside thier own houses but they dont even move them once the space outside thier houses become available.
Another one that really is really annoying is the residents on the main road that our road branches off will often park thier cars in our road when thier road tax expires and put a SORN into the post office, they dont seem to understand the concept that our road is not 'off road' The longest one of these cars has been left in our road was 2 months and even then was only moved in the end as the council had it towed away.
And finally all the above has been made much worse by a taxi driver who has moved into the road opposite us, he has this strange territorial thing that nobody can park outside of his house even though he parks on his driveway and the driveway is rareley if ever blocked by inconsidderate drivers (He only has one car and you can fit two onto the driveway easily).

So basicly I dont mind people parking outside for short stays as long as they are considerate and it is unavoidable.