For "blocking" next door's drive for 10 seconds?

[flyingturtles]

Selling things on fb. Man comes to collect an item, so was at my door for nano-seconds. He parked at the end of my drive, with perhaps half his engine overlapping next door's drive, while he collected from my doorstep.

Next door arrived home and sat behind this car constantly sounding the horn, then the passenger got out and started swearing and shouting about not being able to use his drive and how we were breaking the law.

The entire street was vacant of cars, so they could have either parked elsewhere or turned around and entered the drive from the opposite direction. His drive was actually still accessible. Or waited.

Next door actually went back out again five minutes later, so parking on the road for those minutes wouldn't have hurt either.

Just feel there was no need for such a drama, and the shouting continued after the man had left too.

(Just to add, they block me IN on many, many occasions. When they are happy to park on the road.)

I have a drive with shared access with the neighbour. With things like deliveries we can often end up with mutual access blocked for a few minutes. We live and let live. It's different if one party routinely takes the piss, but a couple of minutes disruption for a temporary issue is not worth raising the blood pressure or ruining neighbourly relations for.

I don't think he was bursting for the loo, the amount of time he stood screaming at me after the man had left.

@BogRollBOGOF yes this. They are the ones that routinely take the piss with actual visitors. I have a delivery or something and they go mental.

My driveway always seem to be fair game for everyone, or so they think. They could park elsewhere but it’s a daily occurrence that someone parks over the whole lot or half. Taxi, Post Office,courier, just eat delivery. We are in a residential area so there is other parking. It absolutely grinds my gears, because it’s rude and it’s inconvenient. Maybe today just tipped your neighbour over the edge. I don’t necessarily think YABU but neither is your neighbour.

People do it to me ALL THE TIME.
It may have only been seconds, but when it’s the 5th time in 2 weeks, your patience goes. I used to be polite about it, but these days I’m less so because I’m fed up of it.

Honestly I think everyone is being unreasonable in this situation. YABU for taking it personally. Your NDN ABU for kicking off so much. Your visitor ABU for parking like a twat. I hope the rest of the street doesn't have to put up with this kind of high drama on a regular basis.

The person who thought it was ok to partially block someone else’s drive is the most at fault here. It doesn’t matter whether he was there for 1 minute or 20 minutes. Assuming he has use of his legs he should have parked somewhere else.

You don't park over people's driveway's, not even by an inch. Unless you're a total dick.

I'm taking it personally because I was personally screamed at long after the event.

People do do it all the time ... usually them to me. And I've never once shouted back. Even when told to F Off when I ask them if I can leave my own drive.

There's obviously more to this than you're telling us - obviously. Have there previously been confrontations between you? How did you respond to them blocking your driveway? I can't imagine you stood in silence whilst they were yelling at you? Why didn't you just go inside? Your version of events don't actually make any sense. And yeah, don't block people's driveways.

You should never block someone's drive, even for a second, especially if there's somewhere else to park. It's really entitled behaviour.

The visitor should not have blocked the drive if there were other spaces, but as they were collecting, they might have thought it was easier to park as near as they could as they’d be very quick.

Your neighbour is an arse though if they could
see they were there and were going to move it straight away. Since they do it to you regularly enough I’d of just smiled and waved.

I did a doorstep drop off for a friend a few weeks back (some flowers), and her street was full so I parked over her side of the shared drive, rang the doorbell and was aggressively honked at several times by her neighbour who could clearly see I was about to come back to the car as he returned from an outing. I know it was an inconvenience, but lighten up (plus like your neighbour OP, he could actually still have got on his driveway - one of those weirdos that drives on rather than reverses on - don’t even get me started on that 😂!)

If it was only for 10 seconds or what ever, when the neighbour started sounding the horn, you could have gone out, apologised and explained he will be gone in a minute before they started swearing?

Omg, I haven’t been on Mumsnet for months, thought I’d have a look today as in bed poorly and this is the first post I read!! You lot are a different breed - he was there for minutes at most and really did not need a pathetic response. Stop defending the Arsehole sitting with his hand in the horn!

People are so bloody precious about driveways. Even if they can get in they'll make a song and dance about someone parking 1/10th of a millimetre over the drive.
I agree people shouldn't do it and it must be bloody annoying but if that is your biggest worry then your life must be empty.

You can't reason with the unreasonable. We shared a drive with next door neighbours for 20 years. Never had a cross word. Both made sure that the shared bit was kept clear. If, once in a blue moon it was blocked when either of us was coming home, we would park on the road and move later. If blocked in and we could we would leave it 10 mins or so.

It obviously wasn't ten seconds.

"constantly sounding the horn, then the passenger got out and started swearing and shouting about not being able to use his drive and how we were breaking the law"

If as you say he was already on his way to the car when the neighbours arrived, how could they have done all that?

No one should be shouting and swearing over this. Have a little blooming decorum.

Why are people so highly strung. They completely overreacted.

Driver started sounding the horn as they approached. They stopped behind the car while still sounding the horn. Passenger got out and came up his drive shouting and swearing. I went inside and as driver parked, he continued screaming at me through the window.

I think your neighbour over reacted but at the same time it was a bit thoughtless of your buyer to park over their drive. I've been in a similar situation and waited a couple minutes for the delivery driver to move, I recieved a mouthed sorry and wave which was nice but not needed as it wasnt a big deal at all

On the one hand

The visitor was being unreasoable because you are not supposed to block someones drive i.e parkin front of a dropped kerb. After all if you do this on a driving test you'd fail. You might say well it was 10 seconds or a minute or whatever but in a way it is kind of saying that you time is more important than theirs. Often then people will say it I'll only be 10 minutes (numerous posts in past for people living near schools) but by that token how long would it be reasonable to block say a hospital exit 5 secs?

Your neighbour may have spent quite a lot of money to get that kerb dropped and your visitor showed a lack of consideration and was selfish.

On the other hand your neighbour overreacted but it depends if this happens often and he might have been having a bad day.

They both sound really quite unhinged.
Are they normally this irrational?

They didn’t need to scream and shout.

But yes YABU, especially because there was no need to park over the drive at all. Its a very rude and inconsiderate thing to do imo.

So to clarify. Your neighbour is abusing you for something someone else did?

Your neighbour is an arrogant shithead. But you knew that already.

So buyer turns up, turns off his engine, gets out of the car, shuts the door, walks up the garden path, knocks the door, waits for you to answer, you hand over the goods, he pays you, you have a little chat, the next door neighbour turns up, realises someone's parked over his drive, stops the car, and decides to lean on the horn...

all in 10 seconds?

How long was the drive really blocked for OP? You've used the word 'minutes' later in your post so presumably not a momentary thing, and long enough for NDN to wonder how long he was going to be there...