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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

guy came out of his house and started swearing and shouting for using a few ft of his drive to turn around

167 replies

pettywitchinlondon · 02/06/2015 14:07

Had to pop out at lunch in the car. Was to a new place, so made a wrong turn. As the road was empty I turned the car around using mostly the pavement and a few ft of someone's wide drive. Just as I was about to complete and drive away a guy thumped my car and started shouting at me for using his drive. I said sorry, but didn't even wind down the window but he saw me mouh it. Was shocked and just drove off.

Was I in the wrong? I did no damage and was barely on his drive for 10 seconds.

OP posts:
ClumsyNinja · 02/06/2015 16:02

I'd have sworn & thumped the car too if you had done this where I used to live.
When my DS was young, he knew he could run around on the front garden but not out of the driveway. Then you get incompetent drivers like the OP who think it's fine to reverse up your drive to turn around without any thought for children and animals playing in their own space.

Stupid selfish drivers give me the rage! As another poster mentioned, I used to dream of getting my own back by chucking a big tin of black paint at the windscreen or those Stinger devices used by the police.
Instead, I just got shouty. Grin

Lookatmyredtrousers · 02/06/2015 16:02

Lol that road is massive

Lookatmyredtrousers · 02/06/2015 16:04

But surely your toddlers could be hit by any visitor to your house? Doesn't need to be a sneaky 3 point turner

TheChandler · 02/06/2015 16:08

While using even a small part of someone's drive to turn is irritating as hell, turning into a knob who rants and raves at complete strangers is infinitely far, far worse. Theres a lot to be said for calmly asking someone not to do it again. The first time at least.

sadwidow28 · 02/06/2015 16:09

pettywitchinlondon - you really over-stepped the mark IMO when you posted that Google Map. Is there no privacy for people you have offended?

I didn't agree with the man allegedly thumping on your car. But you do appear to be very 'entitled' in your day-to-day social living/driving.

You said No, it's hard to DOA 3 point turn somewhere like that. It is NOT hard - you are just too lazy to do it. I learned a 3-point turn on roads with street houses and can still turn my car round on a sixpence if necessary!

You asked, "AIBU". My vote now is YABVU

sadwidow28 · 02/06/2015 16:12

Theres a lot to be said for calmly asking someone not to do it again. The first time at least.

And what do you do when it is a series of random strangers who do it all day and every day? Whilst I don't agree with banging on someone's car, I have been irate enough to shout/scream loudly at the 15th person who has done it on my drive and nearly run over my elderly cat!

twinjocks · 02/06/2015 16:15

I'm a bit gobsmacked at the rantery about driveways, tbh. Parking in someone's drive, an absolute no-no, to be sure, but turning? It's that big of a deal? I live on an estate and frequently see people turning using the driveway/pavement in front of my house. Does it bother me? Nope. We've got a few cars in the family (young adults) and if we have to swap them around to get in and out - zoom zoom across the road, turning in neighbour's drive. Are they bothered? Nope. If neighbours need to do the same, I'm perfectly happy with it. I can't see any reason whatsoever for the kind of bug-eyed, vein-popping, get-orf-my-land fury the OP has encountered.

ClumsyNinja · 02/06/2015 16:16

redtrousers not the same really.
Visitors will drive forwards onto a drive and (hopefully) will see any hazards. It's the sneaky reversing buggers that I take issue with, as they are usually de facto shitty drivers because they can't turn around in a normal size road and totally unaware of anything around them, particularly from behind.

Mind you, the worst offenders used to drive all the way up the drive to turn around at the top. That really irked me. Such twattiness.

IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou · 02/06/2015 16:16

I can not believe you have just posted a pic of the persons house and driveway

Look - here's someone else's house......

Googly Woogly

You can do it with anyones house - doesn't mean a team of burglars will be round the second you do......

Icimoi · 02/06/2015 16:18

Why didn't you drive until you could turn in the road without using the pavements? A child could come running out of their house and turn onto the pavement in a second. Pavements are for pedestrians, not cars.

By that logic, you should never have driveways that people have to access by driving over pavements with dropped kerbs. Children left running around in the front unsupervised could just as easily - in fact more easily - be knocked down by people driving into the front driveway to visit the house.

Obviously the point of turning in a driveway is that it is quicker and safer than doing a turn in the road, and you will cause less obstruction to other road users. In my experience people who do this don't necessarily get as far as the front boundary and, if they do, they go over it by a few inches at most and for a few seconds. We have a shared driveway in a cul-de-sac and people regularly use it to turn; it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Life is definitely far too short to get worked up about this.

Icimoi · 02/06/2015 16:20

I wonder how accepting they'd be if I drove all over their drives and parked on their grass? Not at all, I suspect!

Obviously. However, driving all over someone's drive and parking on their grass is hardly the same thing as a quick turning manoeuvre, is it?

BitOutOfPractice · 02/06/2015 16:24

That drive is pretty inviting isn't it? Knowing the road as I do I can't understand why t would happen a lot. And it should be eaily possible to turn in that road as well without using a drive.

I still think the guy massively over reacted though

BitOutOfPractice · 02/06/2015 16:26

IknowIAm - bloody hell I know that road too. My ex lives two streets away Shock

TheChandler · 02/06/2015 16:26

sadwidow And what do you do when it is a series of random strangers who do it all day and every day?

Well, judging by the rather oddly posted link to the actual house, if it bothered me that much, I'd either make sure I lived in the countryside, or followed by neighbour's example by planting some strategically placed hedges or even potted bushes from a garden centre to delineate my driveway. Now that the house has been linked, its kind of a result of having a hideous monobloc driveway on a busy street, presumably for ease of access. Alternatively, many homeowners find that a fence and a gate work wonders.

I can't see any reason whatsoever for the kind of bug-eyed, vein-popping, get-orf-my-land fury the OP has encountered.

I know. Ownership of even a tiny piece of land does go to some people's heads. I was out running the other day and inadvertently ended up going up someone's driveway. They were out gardening and saw me, and I apologised and they were really nice about it. "No problem" the man said, "hope you enjoy the rest of your run". So civilised.

RunsWithScissors · 02/06/2015 16:27

Interestingly (well, not really), it's no longer referred to as a three point turn. This is so you do as many turns as you need to without fearing you'll fail that part of the exam.

Icimoi · 02/06/2015 16:28

Do you remember when you did your driving test? You had to be able to do a '3-point turn' on the road without touching a pavement or using a drive/waste land/bit of grass. Well, that is what you should have done. You were taught to do that for a reason.

Yes, and the reason for it is that people need to learn control of their cars, not that that is the only conceivable method of turning a car round. By the same token, back in the dark ages when I learnt I was also taught to reverse round a corner. You could argue that one of the reasons I was taught that was to enable me to perform precisely that manoeuvre when turning in driveways.

ApeMan · 02/06/2015 16:30

I love how people think something belonging to you and you not wanting other people to use it, is it "going to your head".

Probably the same people would get more upset about a chocolate bar if it was something that belonged to them.

LurkingHusband · 02/06/2015 16:33

Here's our story ...

We have 2 drives. One is in front of the garage - basically a few chips of asphalt leftover from some dodgy drive company, that was put in a month before we saw the property. (To give you an idea of how fragile it is, with the present gales we may have lost the last few nanometres of covering.) So anything heavier than a power scooter (which is what is kept in the garage) will churn the surface into a swamp. I wondered for a while why it was deteriorating so quickly. And then a couple of years ago, it snowed, and there were a mass of tracks going onto the drive and out again.

Problem was solved with a concrete fence post across the drive.

The second drive is block paved, and has a small wall between it and the first drive. Well, had a small wall. Some managed to hit it when they used our drive for a turn. Annoyingly on one of the few nights in a year we get out Sad.

So thanks to people "just turning around" in our drives, we have to find quite a wedge of wonga to repair the damage they caused.

The most annoying thing is you could probably turn the QE2 around in the bottom of our cul-de-sac. But someone who is happy to demolish a brick wall and drive off probably lacks the intelligence to look 30 yards down the road to see it.

PatricianOfAnkhMorpork · 02/06/2015 16:34

I can't believe you've posted a link to the map showing this poor sod's house.

Having had a good look at the google map you didn't need to turn round at all as you can get out of it at either end and loop back round.

Motherinlawsdung I want those James Bond style spikes too!

Icimoi · 02/06/2015 16:34

I can not believe you have just posted a pic of the persons house and driveway

CatsCantTwerk, are you equally horrified on the numerous occasions when people post links on here to properties on RightMove? You do know, don't you, that the view of the front of your house isn't confidential information, and that people walking or driving past are perfectly entitled to look at it and even take photographs? Have you ever looked at Google Earth?

I posted on Facebook a photograph of a rather beautiful rainbow. I've just realised that, shock horror, that photograph included the front of a couple of houses. Should I shop myself to the Facebook police?

TheChandler · 02/06/2015 16:35

ApeMan ApeMan I love how people think something belonging to you and you not wanting other people to use it, is it "going to your head".*

No, I think its about people who turn into ranting raving sociopaths at the slightest excuse being able to tell you quite a lot about a person's standard of behaviour actually. And your sense of proportion.

IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou · 02/06/2015 16:36

bloody hell I know that road too. My ex lives two streets away

My family used to live there! Grin

ilovesooty · 02/06/2015 16:46

I agree that you seem to lead a very eventful life.
I also think that you shouldn't have enough reached on someone's drive.
You should have taken as long as necessary to turn round in the road.

ilovesooty · 02/06/2015 16:47

Enough reached = encroached. Sorry.

Rhiana1979 · 02/06/2015 17:35

"You can do it with anyones house - doesn't mean a team of burglars will be round the second you do......"

It does when the poor blokes address comes up when you click the link.....

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