Parking

[Scoobydoobywho]

Would it annoy you if someone was parked over your drive but were still sat in the car?

I'd just knock on their window and tell them their parking illegally against your drive way and to smile while you take a photo to send to the council to complain.

Not if they were prepared to move if needed, assuming you did not think they were spying or taking photos of your property and family. Assuming the engine is turned off.

Why deliberately seek confrontation? Big difference between being stopped and being parked.

It would bother me if it was near a school and they were just sitting there because they are too bloody lazy to park properly further away and walk .

Drives me mad having to ask someone to move so I can get out. Same reason I have to sit by the aisle on a plane - can’t bear being blocked in!

This is a phobia on my part though, so probably not reasonable across the board!

Over my drive? I'd be irritated if it was longer than 5 minutes.

I had this issue with a CF former neighbour - one suggestion I quite liked the sound of but never had the nerve to adopt was to lean on his bonnet whilst on my phone and ignore all his attempts to get me to move - delaying his school run....

I'm struggling to understand what actual negative impact it has upon your life. These threads always seem to be based on some sort of bizarre territorial instincts. Our cat gets highly irrationally annoyed if he sees another cat on walking along our garden wall. I'd hope that well-balanced humans would have something more useful to occupy their minds.

Someone has just parked 3/4 of the way over my drive and gone off to the school, no way I could get out if I wanted to.

There is space to park outside my house blocking no one, it’s just lazy and thoughtless.

I'm struggling to understand what actual negative impact it has upon your life

Because if it happens regularly enough, and usually does if it is a school street, it means every time you have to get your car out, maybe to pick up your own children you have to ask and wait for them to move.

Or if you are trying to get in, you have to block traffic further, get out of your car, knock on their window, have a conversation and then wait til they have left, then get into your drive. Meanwhile, there is a line up of other people waiting to drive along the street.

If they park and leave the car, you have to find them. I have had to pay tradespeople extra because they were blocked in (and believe it or not had someone on MN tell me how lucky I am to afford a plumber!!!), miss a doctor's appointment for my sick child, amongst numerous other 'negative impacts' because someone who regularly parked and waited, decided to this time actually leave the car.

If they are complete knobs, as I have had, they insist that you wait for a 'moment' til they are ready to leave.

After a while, you hear every excuse and if it is double yellow lines, it actually doesn't matter. They are usually there for a reason, and that is usually a safety reason.

OP has stated there are double yellow lines. There is no waiting allowed or parking as per the Highway Code .

So, No. OP. Now I have read your other posts, YANBU

Gosh, you must be a VIP or so rich that you have bought the road outside your house.

If neither of the above apply then how does it impact on you in any way? Presumably if you wished to drive out, the driver of the other car would become aware of this and move or as a last resort you could communicate by speech. I appreciate this is becoming out of fashion in the 21st Century but you could give it a go.

I agree to park over a drive entrance and leave the car is unacceptable but it's not the case here.

Yes, it did bother me. It was always the same person.

But mainly because they would faff for ages getting in and out of the car, while I sometimes waited to get off my drive.

Or they'd move slightly so that it was a real PITA trying to get off the drive and I'd end up have to loop the long way round because I couldn't manoeuvre my car in the direction I wanted to go.

What annoyed me even more is less than 50 metres away there was enough parking bays for them not to have to block my drive.

I have always WFH and my office is set up in such a way that I can see our drive and the road outside the house as part of the usual view from my desk. We’re a street of detached houses so we have wide frontages. No parking restrictions. I became aware of a woman doing exactly what you describe, regularly, and she’d be there for an hour at a time, talking on her phone or listening to the radio so loudly I could hear it in my house. I didn’t need to get out at any of the times she was there, so rather than get my blood pressure up by confronting her, I left it, but observed.

I eventually worked out that she was dropping off her child for a tutoring lesson with my neighbour, and sitting at the end of my drive to wait for her. Not outside the house where the child was, but at the end of my drive. Not the other side of my husband’s car, 15 feet closer to where her child was, which would have been over nobody’s drive at all. Not in any of the numerous spaces which would have legally accommodated her car along about 100 metres of our quiet estate road.

One summer’s day I happened to be on the phone to my colleague when she was sitting there with the window in the car open, while I was on the phone to my colleague. I decided to sit in the window seat by my own open window, and told her about it, loudly: “yes, that weird woman is here again... no I don’t understand why she wouldn’t park in one of the legal places either... no, she always sits at the end of my drive, blocking the car in... yes, I did wonder if she was a stalker... hmmm, yes...”

She had the good grace to go bright red and close her car window, but it took her a good ten minutes of fidgeting like a baby filling its nappy to finally move the car to a legal space just the other side of the house where her offspring was. It worked though, she never came back.

I know I could have spoken to her, but instead I decided to treat it as a psychological study, which was much better for my state of mind.

@Helleofabore

Scoobydoobywho

I feel your pain. I am in a similar situation. I have answered that you ARE being unreasonable if it is a one off and not for long at all. And that they are willing to move as soon as they are asked with no abuse or argument.

You are definitely NOT being unreasonable if this is a regular occurrence and this is a regular Cheeky Parker who thinks this is their personal waiting space.

In my own borough, I have had it clarified that in fact, the only people who have the authority to park over my drive is a residence of my home before it had double yellow lines. It is only with authority from a resident, that anyone can park there across the driveway. So those stating you do not 'own' the road, actually, you kind of do in a way that you can park there or authorise someone who parks there.

I now have double yellows, so I do not know quite if I can even do that now. I don't think I can.

People cannot wait on double yellows either.

Time to talk to your school again. In my case, people waiting or parking over my drive reduces dramatically the visibility of the children crossing the road to enter the school gate (there is no formal crossing place able to be placed on this road) . The school has in the past asked for a photo of the car and they send it out in a newsletter with a request for the illegal parking and waiting to stop.

HTH

There's a difference between parking & stopping

There's a difference between parking & stopping.

There's a difference between stopping and waiting too, or so I believe.

@Scoobydoobywho

We are very near a school so parking is an issue. I've lost count how many messages the school has sent out to park considerably. I think this one lady who does it regularly really annoys me because she never seems to park properly. Over driveways, double yellow lines and right on a junction with double yellow lines. It's like she needs to be as close as possible.

I might find that I need to go somewhere every single day about 5 minutes after she had parked.

No, it wouldn't bother me.

I can’t imagine I’d even notice, unless I was in my car trying to get on or off my drive. I’m sure I do it all the time, if I need to pull over to set up the satnav and just stop in the nearest convenient spot.

I wou like not to notice but as our 2 ds go to the school I see when I leave. I'm not sure what will happen when our oldest goes to secondary school. As far as I can tell she sits in the car while her dh takes the child into school.