You don't have a right to park outside your house!

[LendAnEar]

Burgh! Why is it that people feel that they have some God given right to park outside their home and can demand where other people can/can't park?

I parked on the road yesterday afternoon, in front of another car, getting the perfect spot, just before the double yellows start. There was a bin on the road behind the other car, I assume to reserve a space . It's difficult to find a parking spot so I was happy I got a space.

As I get out of my car another car coming towards me slows with their window down. A woman proceeds to shout "Excuse me, you're not allowed to park there, you need to move. I'm expecting a delivery".

I was annoyed at the way she spoke to me, condecending and assuming because I look young, that I don't know where I can/can't park. I replied that I can park there as it's a public road and I'm not on the double yellows. Lady repeats that I can't park outside her house all day and that I need to move. She has a delivery coming. The house she's referring to has an empty drive!

I simply say tell the woman I'm parked legally and not moving before walking away. The thing is, if she had been polite from the start and not so entitled and asked nicely if I would move then I would have. I just hate that people think they have a right to tell other what they can or can't do

Now I want to be REALLY petty and park there every time I'm in the area but then again now I'm worried something will 'accidentally happen to my car which isn't worth it 🤷🏼‍♀️

Yeah definitely because people love to be shushed and it's not rude at all! You'll definitely get a great response from it

Easily avoidable! Don't try and and implement an imaginary rule! Equally as rude and very ridiculous!

Having said that, though, Teateaandmoretea - I do agree with you about buying/renting a house with a driveway being a choice that people can make. Obviously, for some, it will never be an option - if all you can possibly afford is a bedsit above a shop on the High Street, then you have to accept it - but for many, it's a trade-off. When we bought our house, we could afford a drive OR a back garden. We chose the drive, but we don't complain now when other people have lovely private back gardens (whether with or without a drive) and we have a little open patch on the front or otherwise the public park.

If you prefer to spend more on buying a better/more central location or historic/characterful house rather than a nondescript one further away from town but with its own drive, garage and extra useful features, that's your own choice; but you need to be an adult and accept that, if you consider all your options and choose to spend your money buying A, that means you can't also have B or any of its desirable attributes at no extra cost.

I don't see why this comes as a surprise to some folk. It would be like living on Oxford Street in London and thrilling at all of the endless shopping and dining opportunities and transport links right on your doorstep, but then complaining that there are tens of thousands more tourists and way more noise around than your friend who lives in a village near Uxbridge has to put up with.

Each to her own, I think it's selfish and out of order personally dodgy parking firms aren't the fault of people who live nearby

I agree that scamming, lying firms aren't the fault of any of their victims.

However, how do you define 'nearby'? If I lived in a very built-up area (as I have in the past) with double yellow lines down my street and sometimes having to walk half a mile to find somewhere I could park my car before walking home, should I feel morally-bound to pay permanently for a council car park, because I don't live within half a mile and so it isn't technically my own area? What if my own street was no parking but the very next street wasn't, so I left my car there, outside other people's houses, all the time I wasn't using it?

I just think things would be much simpler if people accepted that, if you don't have your own private property, you have no more or less right to use all public amenities on a first-come-first-served basis. We have a public play park on our road, but I don't expect my DS to have priority for using the swings or slide over anybody else - whether they live in the next street, in the next county or are visiting from Japan.

If we had a back garden and bought play equipment to put in it - then I would object to anybody else coming and using it uninvited - but we don't have a back garden because we prioritised our budget on having our own drive!

Parking isn’t the issue really, ineffective public transport is the problem

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

You make really good points.

House opposite (6 cars, 2 adults) think it’s incredibly unfair we own extra parking we don’t need and should allow them to use it when they wish. They can’t get their heads around the fact they could park further down the road (not even in front of others houses so wouldn’t even “pass the inconvenience on”) and just moan at me regularly.

I've been thinking a bit about this and trying (likely in vain) to see how some people's minds can possibly work.

Well I can give you a little bit of insight into how mine works. I don't think I have a god given right over the public road outside my house. However if I had chosen to buy a house on a busy city street, lined with parked cars, or near to a station or a hospital, I would have expected to have difficulty parking in any kind of proximity to my house. I didn't though, I bought a house in a historic but relatively quiet market town with a good stretch of unrestricted parking on the road outside and accepted that shoppers and visitors and walkers would sometimes be too tight to pay the £1 for the car park and take up space on the road. Therefore sometimes things would get a bit tight, occasionally. I didn't anticipate that the residential home opposite would become a children's nursery and that the owner would think it ok for his staff to take up literally ALL of the spaces every single day and that they would be such shit parkers that they often take up two spaces each. Or that the planning department would not have the sense to take into consideration that the 'unrestricted parking' on the road was ALREADY in use by THE RESIDENTS and exactly how many extra vehicles this new business would bring. (Don't get me started on the parents dropping off and picking up!) Or that the woman in the cottage business next door to the nursery would expand and have her own car and two staff parking on the road and then go and buy herself a vanity car and keep it permanently stored outside my house despite living in the next village herself and also fully understanding the fucking mayhem outside here now and the impact on her mother's neighbours. I also don't know how one couple of walkers can slam their car doors and boot twenty times in the course of getting their stuff out of the car and changing their footwear, and I'm also not impressed with them bashing great clods of mud off their boots right outside my front gate. In a one off situation you just don't know what the crazy parking objecting loons have to put up with on a constant basis.

I will always stand by the fact that if you want the ‘right’ to be able to park outside your house then you need to buy/rent a house with a driveway. Or at least a shared private parking area for residents. My NDNs are a couple who live in a 4 bed house with, from what I’ve seen, no children or grandchildren. They are massively obsessed with parking. They could easily downsize to a house with a drive if it’s such a massive issue

Yanbu. I live in a house with no drive and have a child with asn and no road safety awareness. I would never tell anyone off for parking outside my house, although I have shot a look to people parking who block the gate as that's just rude. For context there is no pavement so blocking the gate makes getting ds (and me) out a nightmare, worse when we have a pushchair in tow.

My opposite neighbour parks outside her house every day so she doesn’t have to walk round from her allocated parking bay. 99% of the time it doesn’t affect me but I can never park outside my own house, and it causes chaos with deliveries. Our houses are all staggered in 2’s on both sides with entrances to parking bays down the side - so the parking entrance is opposite my front door. When she parks on the road no one else can park on the road outside their houses as it blocks off all the entrances or makes it hard to turn into them. It’s also narrow so her car and a delivery van will block off the whole street

I wish they had not built them with kitchens at the front as this is why I think she does it (no mobility issues) but if I bring my shopping home I have to walk it all through the garden and through the house to the kitchen where she can just pop it all inside of the front door.

if you want the ‘right’ to be able to park outside your house then you need to buy/rent a house with a driveway

Agreed!

I once got asked to move my car as i had parked on the wrong side of the road. There was noone parked on either side and no restrictions. I grudgingly moved it but only as I was visiting bil and didn't want the neighbours being annoyed. He knew I was in their house as he actually knocked on the door to ask me to move!

Parking isn’t the issue really, ineffective public transport is the problem

It's certainly a major contributor to the problem, although unless people never need a car, once a car is bought, it has to be parked somewhere at all times when it isn't moving.

As a student, I lived on the edge of a small city in an EU country, where the public transport was so reliable and good value, days and even weeks would go by without my needing to use my car - although I did need it to cart my stuff back and forth and for some journeys out of town as, once you reached the edge of the city limits, it got instantly very rural indeed (long single carriageways through fields with nowhere to stop or park).

Everywhere near me, there were metered parking areas, where you could pay for 30, 60 or 90 minutes or they were free if you had a resident pass. I asked how I could apply for my resident pass and was told they weren't available to non-nationals (even those living right next to them)

I was very far from happy to do so, but the only possible place I could legally park within a couple of miles of where I lived was the street outside the hospital. Oddly enough, although they had dubious 'nationalistic' (I won't invoke the 'R' word) policies everywhere else, they, unlike most of England, clearly thought it immoral to charge or restrict people needing to park to use the hospital.

Parking isn’t the issue really, ineffective public transport is the problem

It's certainly a major contributor to the problem, although unless people never need a car, once a car is bought, it has to be parked somewhere at all times when it isn't moving.

One car is very different from a household having 2 cars, or even 4 or 5 as told in these threads - nothing to stop households sharing one car and using decent public transport.

nothing to stop households sharing one car and using decent public transport.

What if there is no public transport that offers a way to get to work and back and two adults have commutes going in totally different directions?

*if you want the ‘right’ to be able to park outside your house then you need to buy/rent a house with a driveway

Agreed!*

Exactly if you rent a home without a garden, you don't expect to lay claim to a piece of the park being solely for your own use.

Personally, I don't see the moral issue with this as, if you pay to tax a vehicle for use on the public roads, that also buys the right to permanently occupy any legal unrestricted public parking space anywhere in the country. Car-owners without their own drives/garages use this function regularly as standard, often 24/7 - that's what they've paid for.

Just because you have a right to do something doesn't mean you're not being an arsehole if you exercise it in a way that causes inconvenience and upset to other people.

I have a perfect right to say all sorts of things that, if I said them out loud in public, would get me branded as an utter twat. So I don't.

Just because you have a right to do something doesn't mean you're not being an arsehole if you exercise it in a way that causes inconvenience and upset to other people

So let’s start charging & at proper market value and £10 per day for parking in each and every street apart from the street you live in - this would stop it being a moral issue

Just because you have a right to do something doesn't mean you're not being an arsehole if you exercise it in a way that causes inconvenience and upset to other people.

I have a perfect right to say all sorts of things that, if I said them out loud in public, would get me branded as an utter twat. So I don't.

I'm not saying that some people aren't just trying to be difficult - especially those who have a big unused drive and/or only take the space in front of their houses in order to stop others from having it. I would always try and show consideration to others, but I think it's self-righteous to expect people to do that.

Unfortunately, people tend to put themselves first these days. If they have several cars and didn't inconvenience others by parking them elsewhere (and where?), they would consider that they were inconveniencing themselves instead and most people consider themselves as more important (or at least not less important) than others. Look out for Number One and all that.

Say you wanted four tins of a particular kind of food and the shop only had two left, would you just buy 1, 2 or 3 so as to avoid inconveniencing anybody else who might come in and want one too - and just try to eke out the ones that you bought or replace the other tin of ingredients with something you fancied less - or make a note to go out shopping again and only buy the missing one(s) when they have plenty more stock in? I don't imagine most people would give it a second thought. Why is it any different with parking cars?

People have 1, 2, 3, 4 cars that they want to park as close to their own houses as possible - if they can, why wouldn't they? Even if families with multiple cars did try to act kindly to deliberately leave a space for those with only one, they know full well that somebody else with multiple cars will probably take it anyway rather than the one-car householder getting a chance.

As for saying nasty things out in public, it isn't disadvantaging you in any way if you just keep them in your head. They aren't words that MUST be said one way or another. However, having to park your car elsewhere, or paying to park when you could have legally parked free of charge, is inconveniencing you.

Say you wanted four tins of a particular kind of food and the shop only had two left

Sorry, that makes no sense, but I basically meant would you deliberately leave one or more for others when you wanted it yourself.

I may be naive but it's not 'self-righteous' to expect other people to be considerate of others, it's a basic foundation of society. That's why we have laws and sanctions to punish those who don't.

Even if families with multiple cars did try to act kindly to deliberately leave a space for those with only one, they know full well that somebody else with multiple cars will probably take it anyway rather than the one-car householder getting a chance.

Ah! the old, self-justifying if "I didn't do it then someone else would" defence. "Well, it was just lying there wasn't it, yer honour If I hadn't had it someone else would have."

However, having to park your car elsewhere, or paying to park when you could have legally parked free of charge, is inconveniencing you.

...or you could have got a taxi. And inconvenienced no one.

My neighbour, who doesn't have a car, told my parents they couldn't park outside her house. I might be slightly less annoyed about this if her relatives weren't constantly parking outside MY house!!!

Ah! the old, self-justifying if "I didn't do it then someone else would" defence. "Well, it was just lying there wasn't it, yer honour If I hadn't had it someone else would have."

Makes perfect sense if we're talking about somebody taking a dropped wallet that they find on the pavement and know should be handed in to the police but why would you be up before a judge for legally taking an available parking space?!

...or you could have got a taxi. And inconvenienced no one.

In my town, taxis aren't free - you have to pay quite a lot of money to travel in one as it's considered a premium service. If you're travelling from your local airport, a taxi probably does make more sense, but if you live in, say, Wrexham and the only place you can fly from is Gatwick - public transport is very difficult with numerous heavy cases and other luggage - would you pay for a taxi all the way?

We're mainly not talking about people using the airport, though - the thread has expanded to those who own multiple cars and take several spaces on their own street. If folk want multiple cars and can legally buy them, what else are they going to do with them? A dwelling may contain 4 or 5 adults, each of whom work in different directions at different (and varying) times of the day or night, in places not served by public transport. Morally speaking, are they any more wrong for having a car each to help them live their lives than people are for having more children than they have available individual bedrooms for (I'm not saying the latter are wrong, btw)?

The only time I have a big issue with people taking up spaces is when they are being selfish

Like my neighbours with a 4 car drive (previous occupants got 6 on it with careful planning). They’re a household with 5 cars. They turned the drive into basketball court for their teens and park all 5 cars on the street - there only is 12 spaces as most of the houses have drives. It’s meant for the houses that don’t and occasional visitors

The street parking is limited and didn’t take houses like their parking all their cars into account

Is it legal? Yes
Do I think they’re twats for doing it? Yes

The woman in the op was shitty and could’ve asked nicely but I do think it’s ridiculous that you don’t have a right to park outside your own house but I get it , it does annoy me though because when I get hole from work I usually have to park a street away which is fucking annoying but it’s ok as the houses down the road are HMO’s so there’s 4 cars per house atleast .
They just really don’t take that into consideration when building all these homes