....to be bemused by people NOT using their driveways???

[RebeccaBunchLawyer]

Hello.

Moved to the UK nearly 2 years ago, and until I bought a car never really realised that people WITH A DRIVEWAY DO NOT USE THEM MUCH!! Instead, they park next to their driveways, sort of “displaying” their driveways or “protecting” them, then hogging the bit of road next to said driveway.

My very odd neighbours have recently created a driveway and dropped curb (at “considerable” expense as he likes to tell anyone who’ll listen), but, yep, you guessed it, they have only used it to park their car in a couple of times when they went on holiday!

And yes, obviously a fully taxed and insured car can park legally on appropriate bits of road, but why not use your driveway and why the f have one built if you don’t really want to use it? Most of my English friends go on and on about wanting one but would they use it?

I feel like going to my neighbours and asking if I can park my little car on their driveway to get it off the road, since they obviously don’t really want it?!

We have a driveway which we rarely use. guilty face
However, we don't block the road. There is a communal car park directly opposite our house which is technically for the flats nearby but is rarely used so we park there. Obviously if the car park did start filling up, we would start using our driveway... but at the moment we have huge heavy wooden gates on our driveway which are a pain in the arse to open and close. We're saving for some new plush electric gates.

YANBU. I live on an estate where most people have long driveways (not posh, just the way it was designed) and every time I walk around I mutter about people not parking on their driveways as there are loads of cars in the road/on the pavement. I don't get it. I have an allocated space in a small, private car park as I'm on a walkway and I would LOVE a proper driveway. It's bonkers.

This annoys the shit out of me. Yes, learnign to reverse down a narrow driveway takes time and practice, but you get the hang of it really fast. And if you can't learn to do it, you shouldn't be behind the wheel anyway.

Our house (30s semi) has a drive that is too small to use. We can just about get the car on it but then can't open the door as it hits a low wall. It's annoying as I have a 3 Yr old and would much prefer to use the drive but unless we miraculously come into the money to completely redo the front garden then we can't. Our road however is wide and so we can park there without wheels on the pavement obstructing prams/wheelchairs etc so I don't lose any sleep over it

We have no choice but to park in our driveway - narrow country lane with no.pavements. if I parked outside my house on the road then another car couldn't get past.

Dh cleared the garage out last year so that he can now park his (convertible) car in there when it's cold/icy.

I really don't understand why people don't park on their own drives. It seems bonkers to.me.

Oh and it's only a Ford focus (Nissan micra when we first moved and still had the same problem) so it isn't that we have some huge monster of a car either

We had this in a road my mum lived on. Some houses had driveways which you could park 2 cars on (one in front the other) and some house, like my mums, had a drive which you could park a small car on and have to get out the passengers side (unless you reversed in) and you couldn't really get past the car easily to get to the front door as it was so narrow. The road was always busy with parked cars but it didn't bother my mum as she doesn't drive. The neighbours who had bigger driveways always parked on the road for some reason and would get annoyed if people who didn't live in the road parked there (it was near a football stadium) and one day put a note through everyone's doors asking if everyone wanted to apply for residential parking permits for £100 per month! My mum said A) she doesn't have a car and B) JUST USE YOUR DRIVEWAY!

The only person I know who has a driveway and doesn't park on his drive is a retired gentleman. He gets up and moves his car off his drive at 7.30am so that none of the parents dropping their children off at school can park in front of his house. Afterwards, he puts it back on the drive again.

Seems like a lot of obsessive effort to me.

I'm guilty of having a driveway but rarely parking in it. My justifications - narrow drive which is too narrow to move wheelie bins or cycles past, if a car is parked in the drive; narrow road so it's quite tight pulling in or out of the driveway. Ultimately the small size and ensuing difficulties is because we live on a narrow street with old houses, all built before cars were invented...

Previous owners had the driveway put in, I'm guessing they had smaller cars and there was less traffic in the road in previous decades.

I don't know anyone that doesn't use their driveway. Really odd.

We have a drive which we always park on, one of only one or two on our street of terraced houses. It just perfectly fits our car without the car sticking out onto the pavement - though the car my DH would like to buy after this one is 40cm longer which is a shame. We recently got CPZ so they painted lines on the road and you have to have resident parking permits, which is great for us - we haven't bothered to buy a permit because we park on our drive, plus they put double yellows across our dropped kerb so we're not constantly blocked in or out like we used to be. The worst was when we were going on holiday, we had to leave for the airport at 8.30am on a Saturday and when we got up at 7am there was a car totally blocking us in. We were going round knocking on all the neighbours' doors (not popular at that hour) and eventually had to call the police. Thankfully the owner finally emerged, yawning and rubbing his eyes, at 8.25am, after we'd been beeping the horn etc etc. In fact the police turned up a couple of minutes later too, which I was impressed by. I did apologise to our neighbours on our local FB group for the Saturday mornign disturbance!

Actually I do know someone. We have a neighbour (flats) who have a designated space but they obviously think it's too far from the front door so they park right outside the door, meaning that other residents who have visitors have no-where to park.

I don't use my driveway much any more.

It's bloody tiny, and a complete arsehole to get in and out of. When the children got their bikes out of the back garden they struggled to get them past the car without scratching the bloody thing. The back garden gate backs onto the drive way so there is no other option but to walk through the driveway with the bikes.

It just makes sense to park it on the road outside my house, so I can get in and out of the house without hassle. The door we use to get into the house is also in the driveway.

Mines narrow

My car is on the road at the moment, buy only because there's building materials on my driveway. I feel really bad about it, especially as I live on a bend in the road and due to the construction lorries round here I have to park more in front of my neighbours house than mine. Must pop a note through the door to apologise tbh, don't want them to think I'm a cock. (We've all just moved in)

Our driveways are big enough for 2 cars. We also have in shots on one side of the road that are for parking.
We only have houses on one side of the street so the other side of the street is grass and parking spaces. Each in shot is big enough for 2 mid size cars

My neighbour dives a micra. She can only park in her drive if her husband's car is not in it for some reason, she can only park in the in shot if no one else is there as she can't manouver her car behind another car. Therefore she parks on the pavement outside her house.

We recently extended our drive so that we could get both cars on it. The CF neighbours opposite, who had two drives/bays and two cars, starting parking outside our house. This was particularly annoying as they're the type to row in the street and storm out to the car and shout at each other across the street etc, using the car as a refuge (bit like that thread in classics). Anyway, this of course drove me up the wall as I couldn't understand why their perfectly good drive was now not good enough and they had to park right outside my house!
Thankfully a three car household moved in next door and colonised the pavement outside our house and opposite neighbours refound the ability the park on their own fecking drive. The new people don't feel the need to have daily stand up rows.

My bug bear is the opposite (but only due to parking restrictions) so people who create driveways where there is no room for one ie, in front of a tiny terrace, and then buy biggest fuck off car they can find to park on said minuscule patch of block paving, obstructing the already narrowish pavement for everyone.

Can't be arsed reversing on most likely?

Dh often parks in the road so that if I need to nip out he does not need to move his car. What does it matter? Us Brits are crazy huh?

Our estate was built in the 70s, but they'd never envisioned people having cars to the extent they do.
Our drive is sloped and twisted into a garage that if you fitted a car bigger than a mini in you would then have to remain in the car until you took it out again.
It's also at an awkward angle to the road, so people don't notice it's there apparently. I probably ask/have to wait for people to move cars from over our drive 1-2 times a week. They could park 1m to the left and not block anyone's drive, or directly across the road without any issues.
One of our neighbours opposite has the world's shortest drive, anything bigger than a smart car hangs across the pavement. You could wonder why the developers bothered.

DH doesn't use our driveway because it is difficult to get in and out if two cars are on there (mine always is). Plus it saves moving cars around in the morning if mine is blocking his or visa versa. It also stops people parking outside our house and blocking the driveway or pavement or waking us all up when they leave at 6.30 a.m. in the morning (the car that always parks there if we don't does that).

I am guilty of this...I was half expecting to see my neighbours on here moaning about us. I always used to park on our driveway but it's quite a steep slope and after a few years the handbrake on my car went all weird and either wouldn't hold properly or got half stuck on, had to keep getting my DF to fix it. So now we park on the road because we can't afford a new handbrake or car.

my PIL do this! One car on the drive one on the road (drive takes 2 or 3 cars)

it's a mix of a) not faffing around moving cars if the one at the front needs to get out and b) Protecting 'their' space outside their house

people like to park in front of my drive, so i sometimes park on the road so i don't end up blocked in when i need to go out!