AIBU not to tackle neighbour who ran over ds's scooter?

[redhatnoknickers]

We live in a cul-de-sac where there are several young families and some old gits. The under 10s tend to play out in the street most of the day during weekends and holidays, with their balls, bikes, scooters etc. One of our neighbours cannot bear children anywhere near his house and driveway, and regularly goes out to tell the children off. His particular bugbear is bikes being left on the pavement anywhere near his house, even if it's literally for a couple of minutes. Yesterday my 5 year old ds left his bright red and yellow scooter outside this man's house, 3 doors up, for long enough to come inside and drink a cup of water. When he went back out, his brother and the neighbouring children told him that our neighbour had driven down our street to his house, straight over the scooter and into his driveway, then gone indoors. The scooter is totally crushed. (So is ds.) Our neighbour must have seen the scooter before he drove over it, heard the car crush it etc but chose to drive over it anyway. Unfortunately said neighbour is not only a local councillor with plenty of local influence, but also a thoroughly unpleasant individual who thinks nothing of reporting people to the council and the police for any minor or perceived infringement of any rules he sees. I have no particular wish to get into a row with him because the man is vicious, however dh coward that he is, refusing to get involved and my other dc think I'm BU not to confront the neighbour, instead letting ds think it was an accident. I think I may be a coward rather than U, much like dh.... AIBU? What would you do?

[MumOfTwoCats]

Although I am not condoning the destruction of the scooter, I do have sympathy with the older man. My folks live in a cul de sac and it is used as an extra back garden for the neighbourhood kids. It is really frustrating when they leave all their stuff everywhere (even overnight) and I have to get out of my car to move their bikes scooters footballs etc so I can park. Its as if I have more respect for their stuff then they do. I've often dreamt of running it over or collecting it all up overnightand giving it to charity to teach them a lesson.There are a lot of very elderly residents and they really struggle to use the pavement when there are toys everywhere.

I'm not saying you do this but we find that the parents don't supervise the kids when they are out. I once had to go out and tell them off when they were six or seven as they threw half bricks up in the air and ran underneath. It puts me off living in a cul de sac. I do have a three month old and (I hope) I'll be sympathetic to the neighbours when he goes out.

[Sparklingbrook]

He may not have seen it but he would have known he had driven over it. If he didn't notice he shouldn't be driving.

Our bin men always leave the wheelie on the pavement in front of our drive but I don't drive into it even though it pisses me off.

[littlemissnormal]

I work for a local paper and our editor would bite your hand off for a story like this!

[MeAndMySpoon]

Good point, Sparkling. If he says his car is damaged as he didn't see the scooter, then he really needs retesting.

[ImagineJL]

Obviously what the neighbour did was outrageous and totally unreasonable, but I can see his frustration. It must get annoying to regularly have to navigate a course through discarded toys, however sweet the children are.

It may have been a deliberate act of malice, designed to make a point in the harshest way. But equally he may have been distracted, upset by something, and genuinely didn't see the scooter. Who knows.

Before I had kids I used to live in a cul-de-sac like this, where children played out in the street all the time, largely unsupervised other than parents looking out through windows and popping out now and then. It was fine most of the time, but bloody annoying at other times. I remember getting home from work after a particularly stressful day, turning into the cul-de-sac at about 5mph and having to slam my brakes on because there was a toddler sitting in the middle of the road. Kids all around playing football etc, but not a parent in sight.

I think people are sometimes a bit too casual about letting little children play out in roads to be honest. As you say OP, the older ones are OK but the younger ones are "a bit haphazard". Maybe you should sit outside when your young children are playing out, thereby avoiding scooter damage or worse.

[Sparklingbrook]

Exactly Spoon. Scooter or small child next time. And if he says he didn't notice-well doesn't bear thinking about.

[LaurieFairyCake]

Why should he have to get out his car and move it when he's trying to park on his drive - I'm guessing doing that multiple times is really annoying.

It's not like the fact he's a grumpy cock is coming as a surprise to everyone

If a kid is old enough to play out then they're old enough to not leave their stuff on other people's property and their drives.

I would tackle him either (but I might call him an arsehole) and instead I'd take it as a lesson learned not to leave my stuff at his place.

I would complain if he was arsey about normal children's noise/behaviour but not for actually infringing on his property.

[gallicgirl]

I'd consider the local paper too but be prepared for flak on the comments page!

Have I understood correctly that he drove the car out simply to run over the scooter? There was no other reason for him to move the car?

No way that's an accident, didn't see etc.

[MeAndMySpoon]

I remember from the various MN 'someone's parked across my driveway' threads that if someone has blocked a driveway when the car isn't on it, you are less in the wrong than if you block it when the car is on the driveway and therefore can't move away from your house. Not that this applies really - it is a small portable scooter ffs. I still don't understand why some people think it's ok for this old bully to smash it up and teach the children a lesson.

OP, I do think you and the other parents should teach your children to pick up after themselves if they're leaving things about on a public pavement, though. People using wheelchairs, pushchairs, people with impaired sight or mobility problems - these are all people who would be quite inconvenienced by your children. But it's still not morally right, or LEGAL, to destroy property merely because it's a bit in your way.

[Sparklingbrook]

Laurie any decent person would have got out and moved it-or asked a child to move it. No biggie. Annoying yes, but not the end of the world. Shame it didn't puncture his tyre.

[ChunkyPickle]

I think that if he did come round to complain about damage to his car he surely would be on dodgy territory - since he's either admitting that he ran over it on purpose (criminal damage), that he didn't see it (shouldn't really be driving), or that he couldn't avoid it (driving too quickly in an area full of kids)

It's an overly harsh lesson for a 5 year old. Sure, if there are bikes in the way all the time (which I doubt they are, having had similar neighbours) it can get annoying, but it's no excuse for such horrible behaviour

[lljkk]

Where I come from, the pavement is not part of the driveway. What happens is that drivers cross the pavement in order to access their driveway. This is one of the few times they have the legal right for their vehicle to be on the pavement. However, they do not have the right to damage property that may be there. They are expected to take due care because they are crossing public space (pavement is not private property). No legal right to mount the pavement without a dropped curve, either.

So therefore, by my reasoning, the neighbour is entirely in the wrong. but I do not know what the legal situation is in your part of Britain. Certainly many drivers treat all pavement as valid parking spaces, and roads and pavements get marked so that it's clear that motorists on driveways always having right of way over all pedestrians (or cyclists in their lanes). This is extremely the opposite of what I was taught in Drivers Ed where I grew up.

If I were you, I would love some legal advice, and I would be extremely inclined to confront him about it, take him to small claims, even, if I could establish for sure that the pavement is not his to treat as private property.

[redskyatnight]

As ever I suspect this is a story with 2 sides to it. Firstly, I agree that if he deliberately drove over the scooter he was wrong. (but maybe he genuinely didn't see it)

However looked at from the other side. You call him a miserable git and that he's constantly moaning at the children. However I wonder if the children do in fact encroach on his driveway/house/garden or generally get in his way and he probably feels pretty fed up that despite repeated requests for them not to do it, they are still doing so. I have to admit that if I'd been in OP's position I would have advised my children to stay well away from his house - surely that can't impede their games too much?

We have DC ourselves so our tolerant to other children playing out locally. however we had a period over many months (when our DC are little and so not allowed out on their own) where the local children were playing football just outside our house. We asked them a number of times to play away from our driveway as the balls whizzed over our car and we were worried about damage. These fell on death ears, so to keep the peace we started parking the car in the garage even when inconvenient to do so.

Then there started a flurry of requests to retrieve footballs from our back garden. Now to get a ball into our backgarden it would have to be kicked the whole length of our drive and then over a 6 foot wall - pretty much impossible unless they were encroaching onto the drive. So we asked the children to play away from the drive to stop this happening. The requests to get back footballs continued. so one day, DH simply refused to give a ball back. I'm pretty sure the local children (and maybe their parents) called us some of the names that you've used in your OP. But strangely we never had another ball in our garden after that.

I'm not saying what your neighbour did is right. But I think you need to look at it impartially and understand if he did it as a last resort because he was fed up of constantly asking the local children to move away.

[NotYoMomma]

well its not like he has just done it is it? he has told them and you numerous times and it still keeps happening. why not teach your kids to leave their stuff on your property when they come into your property?

whyleave it in the middle of the street?

after several warning tbf I feel this is a lesson for everyone

[Jinty64]

I greatly doubt that anyone would risk damage to their car by deliberately
driving over a child's scooter. It's more likely he was concentrating on the position of the other children in the street to ensure their safety when he was turning into his driveway. After all you don't expect to find a scooter blocking your driveway.

I would suck it up and get a new one as he may be waiting for a parent to call round complaining to give them the bill for the damage to the car.

Tesco have some amazing deals on scooters at the moment or if you live in the Inverness area I can give you one as ds3 has two!

[BreadNameBread]

We had a miserable old git like that in our cul-de-sac when I was a kid.

I think that ignoring what happened is reasonable course of action. If you confront him you won't gain anything other than an argument and more upset.

[buzzybuzzybeeshoes]

I expect when you replace the scooter it might be nice to get one with a bell and horn?

[ToomuchIsBackOnBootcamp]

Contact paper. (
Pic of cute child with sad face and ruined scooter.
Write up with "is this the type of person we really want as councillor"
Arsehole doesn't get re-elected
He has sad face
Job done.

[MavisG]

Strongly disagree that children older than toddlers in a cul de sac should be supervised by parents all the time - checking intermittently should be fine. When are children going to learn independence if they're never unhovered over? And children are as entitled to exist & use the pavements etc as adults, people who don't want to see other people around them need to save up for a remote house in the country with plenty of their own land.

[RenterNomad]

Taking the scooter into his house and making DS ask for it back , even if FS was terrified, would have been a far more effective and humane solution for him, rather than the gittish thing he actually did.

[Alad]

You can do nothing.

Or speak to him.

And/Or get press involved....when are the next elections?

And/or involve police.

Most likely that police will have a word which might do the trick, but alternately it could be careless driving, failure to stop/report an accident or even criminal damage...or perhaps he needs his eyes testing.

Either way if you do nothing his behaviour will continue, if you do something it might stop.

[Chocovore]

Why would he risk damaging his car/tyre? I can't imagine a sane person deliberately doing that tbh.

[ImagineJL]

Mavis I disagree. Cul-de-sacs are roads. Any child that isn't deemed safe to cross a road on their own should not play in a cul-de-sac. I don't think many 5 year olds are reliably safe to cross roads, and certainly not when distracted by playing.

Not all the motorists in a cul-de-sac are residents, familiar with the local kids playing. Plenty may be visitors, turning into a cul-de-sac as if it was a normal road, not expecting to plough into a game of football.

[ImagineJL]

Sorry that should say "any child that isn't deemed safe to cross a road on their own should not play in a cul-de-sac unattended"

[redhatnoknickers]

Just to be clear, all the driveways in the street are accessed by driving over the pavement, which has lowered kerbstones to delineate each drive. Our neighbour is territorial about the entire pavement outside his house, the road outside his house and does not tolerate children playing there. The children in the street are not rowdy or thoughtless as a general rule, they are a pretty respectful bunch. They don't roam around the gardens despite it being open plan, nor do they kick balls into people's gardens on a regular basis. Frankly it could be so much worse. That said, the children are not saints. Bikes do get left out now and then. The children are normally very good and pick them up when they see a car coming, or when asked to move them. There were children around in this instance, because the incident happen - but rather than ask, or even bellow "Oi move your bike!" if he was feeling that fed up, our neighbour ran the scooter over. I'm not saying that it was okay to have left it there, albeit for just a couple of minutes, but I do think it was an overreaction. However on balance I don't think I can confront him because this man is generally very nasty and thinks nothing of reporting petty things to the council and police.