about parking over my dive?

[shooblydoobly]

I am not sure if I am BU or not. DH and I have had several discussions about it, and he is def more live and let live about everything than I am, so would value your opinions.

We live in a street with unrestricted parking, but near a busy shopping area. (small town)
There are quite a few driveways, but they are not very big, as the houses are not set far back IYSWIM.

I often come home (in the car) to find that someone has parked over our drive, and therefore I have to park down the road or round the corner, lugging DS/shopping/pushchair for quite a long way. Occasionally it is a neighbours car, but mostly randoms.

I do realise lots of people dont have the luxry of a driveway at all, so that is why I want to know if I should just let it go, and find something more important to worry about.

It just irritates me sometimes, as I was always taught that you NEVER parked over a driveway, out of courtesy, both my my parents and my driving instructor.

Will stop wittering, just honestly wondered what other people do/were told?
(Thanks if you read it all!)

God, that's awful. What if your oxygen levels were low and you needed to surface quickly (remembering to pause on way up obviously) and there was a car in the way?

You could Die!

What is a car doing in the sea anyway, is it Weston-Super-Mud?

Oh, sorry, you said DRIVE!

Must stop drinking in the sunshine

It is not ok, very anti social and inconsiderate but not unlawful.

If someone moves their car out of the garage and wants to get on to the highway then the person blocking them in is obstructing and can be ticketed.
It is madness and just so rude of anyone to block anyone in but bad parking and rudeness is not always an offence.

So you can park across an empty drive?

Perhaps best not too if there´s a garage though?

In theory yes but common sense and consideration for other says no!

Oh I agree.

My Dad has a long drive & people frequently park across.

In the past they have said that he doesn´t have a car in the drive.

No, he says-but he does in the garage at the end of it-which is visible!

He could put up a sign saying "drive in constant use" but inconsiderate people would probably ignore that too.
I am impressed you dad keeps the car in a garage though, I don't know anyone any more who uses a garage for vehicles (ours is full of junk ).

Our garage is too-he´s on his own & the house houses the junk so that the garage can house the car

Also probably only uses it once a week.

I think when he used it every day it stayed on the drive other than in very bad weather.

i tried calling the police and they won't do anything about it, even when my own car was blocked in and we needed to go out.

but the council (i just ring & ask for parking enforcement) will do it with traffic wardens, because the wardens are obviously always happy to write a ticket, and they can ticket for 'parking adjacent to a dropped kerb' even if there isn't a car in the drive, though they do always ask me to confirm it's my house and that i am making a complaint etc as otherwise they could potentially be ticketing one of my guests

Op- I would keep ringing the council then, regardless of whether I needed to go out or not. Surely, people will get the message when they keep getting ticketed.
YANBU btw!

Attitudes to this seem to vary a lot by region - I have an off-street parking space with dropped kerb in an area with loads of student/shared houses, and close to the university and shops, so parking is a nightmare. I regularly get people parking over the drive, and the local police do actually respond - even if you are blocked out rather than blocked in. Once I called them about a car that had been blocking my drive all day and by the next morning it had been towed away....

They have recently taken to ticketing people who park on corners/up on pavements/blocked dropped areas of pavement meant to be used for wheelchairs and buggies to cross. But enforcement seems to be fairly random. And I guess if you live in an area with too much other stuff going on, the police won't be too bothered about parking infringements.

We have double yellow lines at the end of official driveways around here. A friend has still had problems as people sometimes block her drive and her husband is a chauffeur.

It's definitely unreasonable to park across someone's drive.

Can't you just call a towing company to get the car towed away?

There is very little you can do, and it's VERY frustrating isn't it?

I live on a square of houses with the communal middle bit being private land, including the road. We were not covered by local inner london parking rules, because it was private. People started taking the piss, lots of cars turning up at around 8am on workdays with drivers leaving the car and walking out of the square (not into a house). Same drivers arriving back (not from a house) around 6pm.

So we set up a residents parking permit scheme and got a company to enforce it by clamping and/or towing cars that were known repeat offenders. Even then, some landlords who'd divided their houses into flats have sold on their permits. When we spot it we get them cancelled and new ones issued to the residents within the house.

Anyway, the relevance here is what the clamping company said... apparently the clamping laws are/will change and we might not be able to clamp cars any longer. The company was not worried. They pointed out there are other ways of asking people politely not to park in a private area. For example, a large and very sticky notice attached to their windscreen. As long as you don't damange the car this is legal. After spending an hour or two removing this notice every time they park in the square, the company figures most people just give up and go elsewhere.

Maybe you could get sticky notices made up? :)

jack up the car and shove it into the road....
or find a nearby travellers site and tell them you have some unwanted scrap in your driveway...

We have british gas doing lots of digging round here and yesterday they parked a big truck right across my drive and my next door's drive. They could have parked elsewhere in the street that didn't block a drive and they could have parked blocking 1 drive, but they decided to go for maximum impact and block 2 drives which both had cars parked in them (& dropped kerbs!).

I feel your pain!

We have this problem as we live close to the village pub, when the car park was full people would often park over our drive, even if our car was parked there!

We ended up putting up a sign - a tasteful black and white one - saying 'Please do not block driveway'. It has made a real difference! Still occasionally happens, but not nearly as much as it used to.

Never ceases to amaze me how people are when you have to ask them to move - they always say oh sorry, we thought it would be ok as we weren't going to be very long (!) - embarrassed smiles all round.

Except one bloke once who was really aggressive! We're quite careful how we handle it now.

Incidentally, we did ask the PCSO about this once - apparently it is not actually illegal to park over someone's driveway, but of course, it is against the highway code to block someone's access.

He said if you're blocked in and it was an emergency, you can call the police highways office, and they might come out and tow the car away - but only in an emergency. He said for example, if I had to pick up children from school, they would probably ask if anyone else could pick them up for me first.

He did also mention the council and the parking tickets, but that seems to be in business hours only, and as it is pub parking in our case it always happens in the evening.

The 'No Parking Please' sign is your best bet.

I know a colleague actually had someone park their car on HER drive, so she couldn't park on her own drive when she got home. The funny thing is, her husband is in the police force...lol.

This used to drive me up the wall and then I started reporting them to the council ( traffic wardens used to turn up quite quickly, as it was a real problem for the residents and there were lots of complaints to the council) Once I called the police because I was trying to get to the hospital and it was an emergency, the owners turned up just as the police were about to get it moved.
Once I actually chased a couple down the street and asked them to move their car as it was blocking my drive, they refused telling me they could park where they liked, I said fine, I'll just call the police and surprisingly they decided to move.

We don't have this problem much now, as its been changed to permit parking and painted lines etc, plus the traffic warden blitz for a couple of months seemed to help.