To want to park on my own drive!

[LadyCatStark]

We live at the end of a new build cul-de-sac. The road goes up to the end of our house and then stops but it’s just long enough to allow us to reverse into our drive. Our neighbours house is across from ours but their drive is behind their house. Our neighbours regularly have visitors who park at the end of the road, meaning that we can’t reverse onto our drive. Once we’re on, if the car is still there when we need to leave, it’s extremely difficult to get off as we then have to reverse down the street. They also sometimes park further down the road, meaning that we can’t get onto the drive at all as the road isn’t wide enough. Today, I nipped out in the pouring rain for only around 15 mins to get some cash out and when I got home, a car was parked directly across our drive. I had to get out in the rain and knock on the door to ask them to move. There was nowhere else that I could have parked.

Never mind the fact that they shouldn’t actually have had visitors because we’re in a local lockdown area, AIBU to think this is really thoughtless?

I’ve attached a (not to scale picture) as required by MN.

Their house is blue/ purple and ours is green/ yellow. The light blue box is where their visitors usually park.

We live on a new build estate and avoided looking at the houses in the cul de sac bits specifically cos we previously lived in a cul de sac and experienced this. Never, ever again.
All I can suggest is if you all get along just speak to them, I'm with you on the social anxiety though.

Just bang on their door and ask them to move, every single time. Make it as big a pain for them as it is for you. You can be perfectly polite, so no reason to fall out with them - just make it really clear to them exactly how often you are being inconvenienced.

fewming I thought you were suggesting the OP make the neighbours an Indecent Proposal

@Xiaoxiong

fewming I thought you were suggesting the OP make the neighbours an Indecent Proposal

Ha worth a try!!

Can you drive down to the wider bit, do a 3 point turn there then reverse into your drive like that?

I feel your pain OP, we live in a close and are in the turning circle bit, one set of NDN visitors block our drive everytime they visit...total twats. I used to knock on and ask them politely to shift but DH got sick of that so now blocks them in.. meaning anyone else has to reverse out of the close. One time NDN knocked on to ask DH to move his car but we were eating tea so he made them wait 30 minutes until he'd finished eating 🙈 .... i would have caved in and moved it!

Like this

@NachoNachoMan

Like this

OP's drive is the yellow one

Oh yes so it is @Cantbreathe2020

I wondered why no one else had suggested that 🙈

That's really shitty of them

Not at all unreasonable to be frustrated when you can't park but you have a drive. We have parking space in front of our property, but get to it over a drive where we have 24 hr access. The owners of the drive are very reasonable, but we've had incidences where strangers have parked, and we can't past them. The excuse is, 'There's no parking spaces on the road' - Yes, that's because it's a built-up area with a lot of yellow lines. Doesn't mean you can park on someone's private property.

Can their visitors not park right up at the end? Currently, they seem to be 'courteously' parking the other side of their friends' drive but not extending the same 'courtesy' (actual legal right) to you. Why do they drive far enough beyond to leave access to their drive, but not just a little further so you can access yours - and leave the useful end bit that's in nobody's way unused? Is it just because they'd then have to actually walk a few yards further to their friend's house - or are they assuming that you might be as selfish as they are and block them in?

To be fair to the planners, I don't think they planned this badly at all. The narrow bit of road was clearly designed as access first to their drive and then to yours, with a bonus bit of suitable parking or long-term waiting right at the end for visitors or additional vehicles that wouldn't fit on either drive.

If you ignore the fact that it's a cul-de-sac and imagine the road continued on, they've basically just parked in the middle of a single-car-width road that anybody with any sense can see is suitable only for driving along through or accessing drives, but obviously not for just parking in the middle of (except for something like the bin lorry or a delivery vehicle that would have no alternative but to block the road, just for a minute or two - or an emergency vehicle).

Block them in

Hang on...they’re nice people, you’ve never had any problems. Maybe they don’t realise how difficult it is for you. Why not knock in and have a chat?

Maybe speak to the development manager / council about having H bars or double yellows painted

@magicstar1 we haven’t had problems with their behaviour or anything but we have had problems with their parking quite a few times. I just can’t fathom how they don’t realise that parking directly across someone’s drive is going to be a problem for them!

Can you change your drive so you can access it from the south part of your diagram as well?

@bestbefore no the other side is a river!

In the long term, can you ask the council to paint white lines or double yellows to resolve this?

If it's the same car all the time you could a bit on the windscreen

Attached with wallpaper paste

Or let their tyres down

People are just total idiots aren't they??

Just talk to them.

Step 2, park obstructively. Always park out front or block the car in or knock every time asking to move it.

But talk first.

@LadyCatStark
I’d be uncomfortable talking to a neighbor about this, too. But I think If you just approach it with nonchalance you’ll quickly know if they are truly good neighbors/reasonable people. If not, you can always back away from the conversation.

@ladycatstark - I meant like the attached...angle it downward, widen the spread of your drive? (surely there's not a river there?!)

@bestbefore ahhhh I see, but unfortunately there is landscaping that doesn’t belong to us. It would make it much easier for us if it hadn’t been designed like that though!

Monster truck then?