If you have a drive, park in it!

[MooseBreath]

I live on a fairly narrow suburban road that at a very tight squeeze can fit 2 cars side-by-side. Every house on the street has a drive and a garage, though they are occasionally a dozen or so metres away from the house (terraces with drives beside the row of houses). It really bothers me (and maybe IABU) that nearly half of the drives are permanently empty and people are choosing to park on the street directly their house instead. It makes it difficult to drive down the road, especially when another car is coming in the opposite direction!

It's not just my street where this happens, I've noticed on the majority of streets in my area, even on busy roads!

AIBU that cars should be parked in drives where possible?

Our drive is steep and narrow. I have a knee problem that has been going on for just over a year and am waiting for an MRI that's been on hold since lockdown started.

Getting out of the car on the slope is excruciatingly painful and twice my knee has given way in the process, causing me to fall.

Is it ok with you if I carry on parking on the road, or would you prefer me to remain housebound?

@LakieLady Obviously yours is a special case. A sloped drive is very different - the ones in question are practically flat. I would also presume that nearly 50% of the population doesn't have an issue that would keep them housebound if they couldn't park on a flat surface.

We need a diagram to understand where the drives are, in relation to the houses

YANBU in general but I am considering starting to park outside to create a chicane to slow the boy racers down.

People (with the exception of the second poster) are pathetic in how territorial they are.

They park outside their house to stop other folk from doing so, because they think they own the strip of kerb outside their house as well.

What I find funny though is don't these people find it infuriating when they drive off and see someone, and they then find that everyone in that street has done the same thing, leaving nowhere for visitors to park?

Hate people like the OP's neighbours. Just idiots.

Here is a diagram - it's messy, but reasonably accurate.

Neighbours park inconsiderately and make it dangerous to get out of my drive (they don’t have drives) so I put my car on the front so I can actually get where I’m going.

@Saucery

Isn't it easier to talk to your neighbours and sort it than go to the extreme of foregoing your drive ?

My next door neighbour has 6(!) cars. For two adults

YANBU my neighbours do this. Frustrating when parking is at a premium where we live

Asked them several times, GinDaddy and they continue to be selfish fucks who don’t know what a dropped kerb means, so no, not easier. The message might get through that if they don’t know how to park considerately they have to walk further after parking up the road (particularly if DH forgoes the extra parking we have at the back of the house and there are two cars in ‘their’ spots) - we live in hope.

We are middle in a terrace of 3, both neighbours have drives. Both don’t use them, they then park outside their house and as the drop kerb takes up a large part of the road in front of their houses they park edging over our front quite a bit... both doing this means we don’t have space outside our house to park... drives dh mad, I’m not too bothered.

Some people can't confidently reverse in or out of a space. Easier to pull up alongside a curb.

@Saucery fair enough apologies. They sound like exactly the kind of twats no one wants to live around

My neighbour just cannot seem to be able to reverse off or onto the road, every car up till her new one has had a lovely long scratch. Her new car stays on the road. My insurance goes up quite a bit if I declared parking on the road. Other neighbours do it to stop people parking outside their house.

My neighbour has a drive, she doesn’t park in it, instead choosing to park across the top of it slightly blocking the narrowest part of out cul de sac.

Since lockdown started however she has decided not to do that and instead has parked her car in one of the few available parking spaces in our street, which are for the people who don’t have drives. No idea why she doesn’t just park it in her drive.

Are the drives positioned in a way that makes it difficult to either park on or leave them? From your diagram it looks like it could make it difficult if other cars park in the spaces they are currently in. It could be something like that, or it could just be that they’re lazy, but whatever it is they have as much right to park on the road as anyone else.

Our old neighbours used to do this. Spoke to a couple of them about it and they openly admitted it was just less effort to pull in at the roadside than reversing up their driveways 🤷🏼‍♀️ Some people are just idiots

I usually do but at the moment, during the day, my car is parked on the road, to let my kids play on the drive.

No problem, GinDaddy. It sounds petty and it is petty . They are ok in other respects but dropped kerb significance is beyond them.

I think a lot of folk have already hit the nail on the head when they pointed out the reluctance so many have to reverse onto a drive (or drive forward onto their driveway, then reverse off when leaving the house).

I'm not blaming anyone here, quite the opposite - I think their fear and reluctance is often compounded by the fact that people park so close to the edge of dropped kerbs, so very close, that it becomes a nightmare trying to reverse off.

And if people are unconfident about reversing onto their drive (something which I think is an essential skill but that's beside the point) then they won't enjoy reversing off it into traffic blind , because they can't see anything as the cars are parked so close

We have too many multiple car households in this country with one small address as the registered household. When I was starting out I used to live in a terrace in South London and on our Victorian street of about 40 houses, only 2 driveways, and perhaps 20 or so useable kerb parking slots, there was one household which owned 5 cars. FIVE.

What the actual fuck.. so one household can take up 25% of the street, perfectly legally of course and nothing anyone can do.

But it made me long for the Japanese rule of "you have to have a designated spot to park your car in to own one". Yes please.

A sloped drive is very different

Not for most of us, no. Our drive (like many on our road) is 1 in 3. Yet, unless the road and drive are very icy, we always (reverse) park in our drive. As do most of our neighbours.

I guess once one person parks on the pavement, everyone thinks they can. A bit like the lockdown!

Thank @MooseBreath

YANBU in expecting people to be able to park on their drives then. I wanted to check it wasn't miles away, in which case it makes sense to park outside your house.

I wish I had drive space for our cars - would save us a fortune in repairing damage to our cars that others have damaged, then just driven off

Since lockdown, a lot of people on my street have been parking their cars on the street so their kids can use the driveway to ride bike/play basketball etc. It's very annoying.