To park in front of people's houses?

[MsMarvel]

This always seems to crop up from he point of view of the homeowners (and generally are told are unreasonable...) But never seen it from the point of view of the driver.

I travel for work, and am often in small towns / villages. The sort that have quite an expensive car park, and lots of residential streets.

To save money I generally park on the residential streets and walk back into the centre. Today I'm on a street that is very much dropped kerbs for drives, and small sections of raised pavement in front of each house.

BUT

There are no lines or markings, I am perfectly entitled to park here.

AIBU to do it anyway knowing that I am probably pissing people off? I will be gone by around 3.

And our visitors either park on the drive, over a drive or in front on the road....never been any accidents

*over our drive

I've never heard of this. I've lived in London all my life - except for the past year having moved to a tiny village. I don't think I've ever been able to park outside my own house in London, I wouldn't ever expect to. Some days I've been known to walk a good five minutes to get to the only car parking space I've found. So, no. Everyone parks in front of peoples houses. It's just what happens, isn't it?

I'm not sure about our village as we now have a drive, but I wouldn't think twice about parking in front of someone's house if I had to. Just wouldn't occur to me that there would be a problem.

I pay £90 quid a year for the pleasure of parking outside my own home. If that's what you want than ask your local council for resident only parking and pay for the privilege. Otherwise tough shit.

As I said, the grass verges in my neighborhood - all council owned - have never been transformed in a mud bath by cars parking on them (lorries. skip and building vehicle excepted). All the ones planted with daffodils have been respected by cars too, even on the roads of the local schools, so it is a nice green area.

I have always park legally, but wouldn't think twice to park somewhere because it happens to be in front of a house, it's ridiculous! We are not talking about blocking drive or parking dangerously here. Do you genuinely expect everyone never to park in front of a house? How would that even work?

JacquesHammer if you have a private property sign, it's not on. Maybe people ignore it because they don't believe you (not an excuse!). I know a few people who will move stones and blocks of wood to park there - seen so many posts about it on my local facebook group, the same way that people chose to seat on the seat blocked by a bag in a train, to make a point.

all those people who can't bring themselves to pay for parking park on both sides of the Main Road
We live quite close to a geriatric hospital and it is amazing the number of people that would rather park 500 metres away in our road, where they shouldn't.

They then struggle to walk to the hospital sometimes on crutches, just to save themselves a £1.

Or if people were less selfish and a little more considerate of others they wouldn't have to be become the local "parking hitler" would they.

How is it selfish to use a road for it's stated purpose?

Are people selfish and inconsiderate when they drive the same route as me, given their mere presence means traffic jams are more likely and therefore I'm more likely to be late?
Are they selfish and inconsiderate to walk on the pavement outside my house, in case the sound of their footsteps disturbs me?

You don't have any sort of special claim to a bit of road by virtue of living near it. It is a public street, for use by the public

If you don't like that, ask the council to put in a CPZ

come on NavyandWhite, do you always park in a car park, even if it means a 20 minute walk? Who does that?

As long as it's not illegal, and a genuine nuisance, there's nothing wrong in parking in front of a house.

It's selfish. My old house was a 10 minute walk to the town centre and people used to park on the streets around my house so much so that when you came back there was nowhere left to park for streets and streets. Then you would see people coming back with a couple of bags and drive off.

The car parks down the road were £2 for a couple of hours, just bloody pay it.

I agree its selfish.

Especially when you dump your car for weeks while you're on holidays.

YABU!! Not a popular opinion in this thread but here goes anyway...
Where I live we don't have any parking restrictions, however it is residents parking only on my street as we are in Central London and finding a place to park your car can be very hard. Despite the very clear signs, every day someone parks without a permit on the street, stopping someone with a heavy item, elderly person or young child being able to park near their front door. Frankly, I think the worst thing is that you're irresponsible enough to drive to work every day. How polluting! Too good for the bus? I pity the lungs of the kids TBH

I do actually own the stretch of road outside my house and do get annoyed as it's a narrow lane and it means I have problems getting on/off my drive. Usually though it's people visiting the other houses. I have gone out and pointed out to them they were on private property before now though.

Provide public parking

In every area where there are more cars than drives? As Tommy Cooper would have said: Just like that!

Anyone volunteering to have their house pulled down to provide a car park for other people's houses?

The same way that people chose to seat on the seat blocked by a bag in a train, to make a point
Sorry but sitting on a seat blocked by a bag on the train is nothing like moving things to park on someone's private land.

Yanbu if there are no lines and you're not in front of their drives.
People do not own the road space in front of their house, go ahead imo!!

YANBU and it isn't selfish.

Where I live we don't have any parking restrictions, however it is residents parking only on my street as we are in Central London and finding a place to park your car can be very hard. Despite the very clear signs, every day someone parks without a permit on the street, stopping someone with a heavy item, elderly person or young child being able to park near their front door.

I don't understand this post - do you have residents' parking permits or not? If you do and people are parking without them then they are very much in the wrong (and you could consider reporting them). If not then I'm afraid you just need to deal with it.

@Ifailed. I've been working closely with a local Councillor through my work. I asked what residents complained about the most. Car Parking. He let slip that , owing to the sheer number of cars, the days of any of us rocking up and parking on residential streets, for free, are quite possibly numbered. In short, , were just running out of room. Particularly in my little corner of the south east, where many roads are double parked, cars slung anywhere. Pavements blocked and the like. Radical steps are needed to wean us off cars. And yes, I realise they area necessity for many. But, if parking is limited and roads become impassable, things will change. Growing population and all that x

I get this outside my house and it irritates me no end especially when I can't get parked outside my house and have the baby and everything that goes with them to unload BUT if I want the luxury to park outside mine I should pay the £3k to have the kerb dropped so that's life. Park where you want as long as it's legal. What I do object to is people parking in a way that they take up 2 places - we all have busy lives but consider where you are parking and do it in a way that as many cars as possible can park!

is nothing like moving things to park on someone's private land.

but we are not talking about private land, we are talking about common land/ council land.

Resident without private parking are even more annoyed by drivers who park on the road to leave their own drive free, whilst it doesn't belong to them either.

We also used to live quite close to a train station and folks would park in front of our house as they couldn't or wouldn't afford the parking fees associated with their own commute. It ruined it for everyone as the council stepped in placed restrictions and the traffic wardens were there constantly.

However the op is different, I don't understand why her work is forcing her to minimise a tax deductible expense.