Why do people with driveways choose to park on the street? AKA my first parking thread

[NicFairy]

We’ve recently moved house. Old house was a row of terraces. Either side of us had dropped curbs and driveways. They both always parked on the road in front of the dropped curb, leaving us to parallel park into our space in the middle. Par for the course with a terraced street but would frequently have us thinking “If I had a driveway, why wouldn’t I use it?!”

Fast forward to new house with a driveway, yay!! But again, seem to be once more next to people who don’t want to park on their driveways?

We can park one car on our drive. The other half is lawned (will be eventually replacing this so we can park 2 cars). Next door neighbours can park 2 cars side by side on their drive, with no impact on blocking each other in. But do they do this? No.

They park one car on the drive, and one on the street in between our houses where there is space for one car to park. Meanwhile we are left parking one car on the dropped curb in front of the one on the drive, with me and DH swapping the cars around when whichever one of us who has blocked in the other needs to get out.

They also frequently park the second car closer to our dropped curb than to theirs. So today, their back wheel is right up against the end of our dropped curb, with a metre of curb left beyond their front bumper on ‘their’ side of the curb. Days like today make it slightly more ‘fun’ to get our cars in and out of our drive as the space is quite tight.

I know I will probably never bring this up with them. I’ll probably just enjoy obsessively watching how they park their cars every day for the next however long, and assuming that the only possible answer for why they would do this is some sort of assertion on dominance that they assume rightly that we will probably never challenge, it is a space anyone can park in after all, it belongs to neither of us.

But why wouldn’t someone want to park in their drive? Can mumsnet enlighten me, or do my otherwise friendly new neighbours actually hate us?

Having had both arrangements, I'd rather park on the road. It's far easier to get out, particularly if you need to back out of a drive (which was sometimes necessary as it was on a busy road and I wasn't always able to wait for a gap in the traffic coming up behind me in order to back in).

I can tell you why I personally don't.

I live in a 1930s house and back then cars were much narrower. As a result our car can fit on the drive but with inches on either side to spare between the post.

For this reason I am terrified of driving on the driveway and always get my husband to do it. Sometimes if he isn't home, i will park the car on the road in front for most of the day.

It never stays there overnight though.

Why don't you ask them?

Maybe they are crap at parking so close to another car??

I don't get it either OP, the car is safer on the drive after all. But I am one of those weirdos who puts car in the garage every night.

because they are selfish?

Maybe because they don’t want to look at a car from their front room window, it may make that room darker, they may prefer the view of the cigar den to the car.

cigar den = garden!

It doesn’t seem like a particular mystery to me, I would assume it is hard to pull out onto the street when there are two cars on the drive.

I often gaze out of the window to look at my cigar den.

I want a cigar den

Probably struggle to get on/off and have been blocked in on the driveway previously

I find it hard, as do my dc to get in and out without opening the door wide so this might be an issue for someone with mobility issues making it hard to park both side by side on the drive. You would not think to look at me that it would be an issue.

If they are like our neighbours it is because they are saving the driveway space for the third car in the family or so other family members have somewhere to park when they visit.

Well in my neighbours case it’s because he had a fancy, highly stealable car and if he parked it in his drive people might break
Into his house for the keys. He therefore parks outside my house so they’ll break into my house instead. Twat!

We had a neighbour who insisted on parking on the road to stop anyone else parking there. When he bought the house it already had enough parking for maybe 3 cars...he then went on to add more parking at the bottom of his front garden and actually paid the council to install a drop kerb. He ALWAYS parked on the road and woe betide any neighbour/tradesman etc who had the temerity to park outside his house. He only lasted 3 years and he decided to move as he’d had enough of having to deal with us awful neighbours and our indiscriminate parking....twat

A very large number of people cannot manoeuvre their (usually unnecessarily large) cars.

They won’t admit it though so will come up with a million reasons why they don’t.

If you're struggling to get out of your drive couldn't you reverse on? It is best practice in the Highway code after all.

I sometimes wonder what I'm missing having the living room and dining room at the back of the house. I have to get up to see what's happening in the road. If there was a CF parking situation I wouldn't know.

I tend to park in front of my dropped kerb at the weekend so more light gets into lower ground floor of the house. As soon as it gets dark, I always move back in.
I don't do it during the week as I'd get a ticket - my road is residents parking only.
If however I had a big drive and could park two cars, and lighting in my house was in no way affected by car(s) on the drive, then I'd always park on the drive.

Neighbours that do odd things often have a good reason. I'd try and get the rest of the front paved sooner rather than later and then leave them to it.

I have a drive....I often don't park on it because when I do any one of my neighbors 4 children (in their 50s) park blocking me in .....as my child has a severe medical need which I have explained to said neighbour which requires us to get to a&e (me-school-a&e) within 60 minutes, I choose to park on road in day, and drive overnight. As is my right

I sometimes park my car in the road because I'm fed up with having people parking across my drive way and not being able to leave the house when I want to because of it.

My dad does this and it’s because he finds it difficult to back out of the driveway. To be fair, it’s pretty tight and the street he’s reversing into is usually double-parked. It’s easier to leave it on the street on a day-to-day basis when he’s out and about, and only put it on the drive overnight.

We have big driveways. In a block of 7 houses only 3 use the drives. We live near a large tourist attraction and people often use our road as free parking. So I think that's why many don't use the drive. I don't care if tourists park on the road as long as they don't block my drive!