To wonder why people are so precious about parking outside their house!

[Snowflakes1122]

I was driving along a street today, phone rang so I parked up (safely and legally) to answer it.

Next thing I know a woman is outside my car window staring at me, gesturing me aggressively to move my car forward. I look behind and her husband (I assume) was pulling his car off their drive and wanted to park exactly where I was. Despite a half empty street full of parling spots and their double drive.

Why are people so precious about parking outside their house?! Especially when they have a double drive

I have arguments with DP about this as he gets really annoyed and I have to say 'you don't own the road' (on repeat). Mind you, we all rejoiced when our ex neighbours moved as they owned FIVE large vehicles (and only one of those who lived there drove, so were always at least 4 taking up spaces on the road).

We have huge parking issues in our road. And to make it worse they painted double yellows along some of the road yesterday and we lost another 5 spaces to allow people with private parking wider access to their nice big car park. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it all I can tell you that having continual parking problems is part of the reason I want to scream and run away from home. If I come home after 6 in the evening then I have to park three streets away and no we can't afford to move. Some people are just parking twats but some, like us, are driven crazy by it.

It annoys the hell out of me because we are the end house on our terrace and so it's easier for people-who-have-a-car-too-big-for-their-skill to park there. And then I have to lug the windsurf half way down the road instead of just popping it over the garden wall.

I used to live in a Victorian terrace and crazy neighbour lady used to put her wheelie bins outside to try and save parking space for her DH.

I can't understand why people think they have the right to pull stunts like this or get het up over it.

I park near a station quite often and recently some stupid bloke ad a go at me as I was leaving my perfectly parked, nowhere near anyones drive car and said he was sick of people parking outside his house.

I just said "Oh I can't imagine why you chose to live next door to a train station if people parking outside your house annoys you" and stalked off.

I parked my car down the street due to lack of spaces near my house. It stayed there for five days as I was away with work. One of the houses put a note on my windscreen asking me to move the car as there were two busy households, both with children. They left no name or house number, but as luck would have it the first door to answer me was the right one (she'd left the note, he answered the door). She'd written the note on photo paper so it left a sticky mess all over my windscreen. So I turned on the tears, apologised for the inconvenience and explained I'd had to leave the country urgently due to the unexpected death of a close family member. He looked horrified.

I try to park outside their house as often as possible now.

My diagram clearly illustrating the utter Wrongness of the annoying personal trainer's parking habits.

She would still be wrong if she pulled her car forward so she's not directly behind our drive because all the blue area is shared access not places for parking (the drives are paved completed differently so it's very clear that this is not a driveway). However, it would allow me to get out of my driveway. without doing a 27 point turn. It makes it difficult for the orange neighbours too.

To be right the personal trainer should park in the parking bay and not on our shared access at all. Or somewhere else in the street.

Obviously I don't do anything about it because then I'd feel like a petty parking warrior. And I can get out if the drive. It's just annoying to do so.

of course it's not rational but being territorial is often a knee jerk thing, people vary in how successful they are at overriding the knee jerk reaction

Horseyhorsey No you aren't the only one. It annoys me too .

When we moved here there was loads of parking, so if somebody parked outside it didn't matter; we could just park further down. So many people have had driveways built in the last 6 years that now there isn't enough on-street parking. Drives are built the width of the house so each one takes away 2 spaces.

The people who have done that then have regular vistors who park in front of the houses with no drives. Unfortunately it's legal for them to do that, even the arseholes across the road who choose to put one car in their drive and park the other one slap bang in the middle of a space outside ours that is big enough for 2.

I don't mind parking a bit further away, but when there is literally nowhere to park then I do object to strange cars outside my house. We can fit our 2 in tight up together but obviously you can't park up tight to a car that might need to move.

The other thing is I have no issue at all with somebody parking while I'm at work. But what seems to happen is we'll find a car there we've never seen before and it'll get left for a week or so and never move. So we have a week of not being able to park.

Worst of it is that all the houses have access to the alley and a garage, so nobody needs a drive anyway! Ours unfortunately is falling down and we can't afford to fix it or pull it down, so we can't use it.

Its insane.

I park on a residential road near to where I work. Its a wide road with loads of parking, no parking restrictions but its never full. Roughly half of the houses have proper driveways with dropped kerb access, but many have a driveway but haven't actually got right of way to access it.

I try to avoid parking in a way that blocks the driveways without right of way access (even though technically I could park there if I wanted to). Occasionally, though, I end up parking with a few inches of my back end overhanging their drive. I always allow enough room for them to get their car in and out - out of courtesy, again I don't have to do this by law.

Well, for fuck sake, some of these precious fuckers! I have had notes on my windscreen, a mouthful of swearwords from one woman and threats to my life from an ancient grumpy man who said I had 'restricted his view of the road so it was difficult to get out of his drive'.

Oh do fuck off!

I think its because like in our street, everyone has 'their' space, and there is an unspoken rule of who gets to park where between the neighbours, and it keeps the peace and everyone knows where their spots are and everyone can get in and out without hassle and it all runs smoothly.

So when someone who doesn't live there comes in and takes one of those spaces, it creates havoc, because usually they dont park correctly and make it difficult for the usual residents to get in and out.

Ours is a dead end street. There are 5 houses and 1 flat this end of the street, and there are 8 resident cars, and the end house has people who visit and use her drive daily. There is space in front of each house for 1 car, but 3 of us have 2, so we each put one on the drive, and the other 3 'second' cars have it sorted between them where they park on the street. Two of them side by side up against the dead-end bollards, and one just behind so they have room to reverse around him and around into a little alcovey bit.

my DH is the one who parks 'behind', and leaves room for me and our neighbours to reverse off our drive between his car and the one who parks in front of him. You can guarantee that any visitor will park in his spot and they pull up RIGHT BEHIND the other cars.. that one person, parking like that manages to essentially block 4 other cars from getting out.. so it does piss us off! I generally end up asking them to back up and leave the room.. and tell them its someone's parking space and they need to move it at X time.

I've had my car keyed twice, broke into and ransacked once and number plates stolen all in the space of the last year. This is why I always park outside my house now. So my CCTV can keep an eye on it.

I don't understand it. We live on a road where the majority of houses have no drives, so it is mostly in-street parking. I couldn't care less who parks outside our house. However, one neighbour (who has a drive) has decided that no one should park in front of her house. She has a dropped kerb, of course no one blocks that, but she means she doesn't want anyone using the legitimate space outside her house. She has taken this to the point of posting notes to her immediate neighbours stating that parking will only "be allowed" for short visits and deliveries. Wtf?
In the last few weeks I see that they have also decided to knock down half the wall outside their house,making it seem as though the drive extends width ways into their front garden, I guess to try to make out that they need the full width of their house for access. Selfish fuckwits.

I think regardless of rights and law and entitlement to park , it is a manners thing and that's why people get affronted sometimes. I used to work in a large hospital and the nearby residents (big posh houses with huge drives/garages/dropped kerbs/Hbars and double yellows between them on their side but still weren't happy ) were always complaining about hospital staff parking in the neighbouring streets to the trust management. We all were helpfully given a leaflet about parking considerately from the local council obviously because of these complaints and it said not to slam doors , not park too near someones drive , even said don't take up the last space or two on the road in case people had deliveries coming. It was incredibly hard to find somewhere to park to go into work and the large majority of us followed these 'polite' parking rules but still some people will always hate you parking in 'their' space or 'their' street., however polite and considerate and correctly parked you are. They tried to bring in limited time parking in all the surrounding streets but then we wondered how they would feel if they or their family were admitted to A&E and half the nurses had gone to move their cars

We used to have neighbours opposite park on double yellows (when no room to park both sides) and then the verges get churned up too. This is why we had parking as a 'must have' for house purchase and rejected lots of otherwise lovely houses.
(I realise we are lucky to even have the option and to previously live on a road with very few car owners).

Never come across some of the, frankly absurdly rude, behaviours mentioned here.

Too many people have too many cars.

My NDN does this and I love winding him up every time I park

He insists on parking his ridiculously long estate car up to the pillar of my driveway so I can't get on or off as it's on a corner so not enough space to manouver when his car is there.

So...I park over the drive to stop him and watch him angrily stomp around as his car dosent fit unless he steals my pillar space

Little things!

I like to park outside my house just because it easier etc but I wouldn't go so far as to do things like key someone's car because they've parked there! Some people are very odd.

Nicketynac Very likely she's hassled elsewhere, I'm a carer and the amount of comments I've had from people (when parked in legal spaces) is ridiculous. Don't get me started on the people who park in the 'carers only' space for the whole day!

I'm just grateful to be able to park in my road sometimes. Outside my house is a complete bonus.
People who are weird about parking about their house are usually weird in other ways too. The two often go together in mad neighbour threads.

I think they're bonkers!

We don't have a drive and we have to buy an annual residents permit to park on our road. But I often have to park a fair distance away if it's busy - doesn't bother me, it's part and parcel of living in a mid-terrace with no driveway.

Just wanted to say MiLady's diagram is really good! Love the colours & key !

Just wanted to say MiLady's diagram is really good! Love the colours & key !

Needs trees, doggers, and council officials. I've been spoilt on another thread.

So weird and mad. Someone came to my sisters front door and complained that I'd parked my car in front of their house! Wtf?!

Why thank you.

I do have bushes but I'm not drawing doggers in the bushes outside my house. Then DH would probably have reason to complain about people using the parking bay!

I am a carer, when I first started I was out shadowing someone else. We parked in a space in a nearly empty public car parking area, in front of several houses who all shared the spaces. Spaces either side of where we parked- some silly cow came and told us to move, which the person I was with duly did (i would have told her to do one)- and she then proceeded to move her car 1 space over to the one we were in- I was like AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF SHE THEN BUGGERED OFF AGAIN 15 MINUTES LATER I MEAN WHY WOULD YOU EVEN BOTHER!!

I would never buy a house without off road parking. My sister doesn't have a driveway, they're a row of 3 houses all set back from the road but there is only a limited number of parking spaces on the road due to a bus stop and a disabled space and corner house on the next roads driveway. If everyone parks properly they can all fit on the row. BIL is always arguing with the neighbours who in all fairness park like idiots, with massive gaps in between their cars so not everyone can fit. He asked him to move one of his cars once so he could fit in and the neighbour reversed into his wife's car!! BIL found it highly amusing

Everyone on my road has a double or triple driveway (except us - can only fit one car and other on the road outside) but the bloke next door but one insists on parking on the road and it drives me insane - there is NO NEED - he had a huge drive, and we never get unrecognised cars appearing. Our road is so narrow and it's a tight squeeze to get through, especially the bin men! It also makes it awkward for their neighbour opposite to get off their drive. We even have a dead end where there's plenty of space to park so if someone was going to park in our street they would park there anyway? Doesn't make me any sense.