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?

I think a lot of people can’t park their massive cars.

Or they are just lazy.

Don’t have a driveway myself. Bit baffled by people who don’t use theirs (unless the drive is clearly tiny).

@Sparklingbrook

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.

I think a privileged person more than a weirdo! Have you seen the size of most UK properties?

Either they are so small the garage is needed to put stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.

and/or the garage is too small to fit a normal size car.

Such bullshit to suggest that people don't park on the driveway because they find it difficult to get on and off it. Fucking LEARN then. And if your driveway is narrow, GET IT WIDENED!

Well, ours is narrowed due to people parking across it. So I can't really do anything about that.

We have three cars. We can fit three cars on our drive. However, if someone parks opposite or above the drive it's not possible to get the angle to get off the drive (it's a slope). Then we are all trapped!

One always gets parked on the road, sometimes two. Depends on who is going out.

This was our main reason for moving. We have a narrow drive, 3 cars, busy road. Just bought a place, with room to drive in and park 6 cars. Never did I think parking space would be my top priority

We personally don't as our drive is nearly impossible to get onto. The previous owners put a gate in that even when fully open, leaves barely any room to get our (pretty small) car through.
We plan to have the space widened over the next year while we have renovations done on the house but until then, we will continue to park on the road outside.

If they're like my ex-neighbours it's to stop other people parking outside their house. They strategically parked 2 of their 3 vehicles on the road despite an ample driveway so that other people (opposite or workmen etc) could not park in front of or opposite their house.

@motherloaded, well I have never thought of myself as privileged. My parents put both their cars in the garage every night so maybe it's hereditary. Our loft is very full though.

Haven't RTFT so don't know if our reasons have already been mentioned but I've lived in two houses with driveways and personally preferred not parking on them.

The 1st house was because the driveway was right on the corner of a road, it wasn't originally a driveway but was converted by the previous owner (think it used to be a garden), the angle made it really difficult to get in and out as was right on a bend and the road dipped there so if it had been raining (which it often does😂) it would badly flood making it a nightmare to get out. Although there was never any issues with parking here, there was space for everyone, yes people had to parallel park but to be honest that's a basic of driving that I personally think everyone should be able to do anyway.

The 2nd house was because we'd had it too many times where strangers would come and park their car in front of our driveway leaving us blocked in for hours meaning we couldn't get out and didn't know who's the car was to ask as it was never someone that lived in the street. After being late to things on too many occasions we started parking in front of our drive instead. Again, this shouldn't put anyone out as nobody should be parking in front of our drive anyway and again, parallel parking shouldn't be an issue

I normally park in my drive or garage, but my house opens straight onto the road with a short bit of my own land at the front, which people think is the pavement, the pavement is only marked by a white line so people park right up to my door. Sometimes I park out the front, 1)if I have shopping it is much easier to get in through the front door as its quite a walk from the drive, or 2) if any idiots on the road park on my front land/across the pavement. If they do this, it blocks access to my front door, and means I can't get deliveries etc. If I park there at the edge of my property others park in the right place and it leaves my land and the footpath unrestricted, meaning I can get deliveries and people don't walk on my land/or the road.

Also, I have as much right to park on the road as they do. Drive or no drive.

I park on the road, my driveway is narrow and I can’t open the car doors all the way, I have a grassy area next to it but I don’t want to pave over it, I like having plants and greenery at the front and the world needs less concrete not more. It’s planted as a wild flower area to attract insects and bees.
My road has plenty of on street parking though.

Because they can

I frequently park on front of my drive rather than on it, because people are ridiculously rude and block me ALL THE TIME. So this stops that happening, yet to find a way of stopping them blocking me out and then I have to park half way down the road which when you have a disability and shopping bags is a big pain the arse.

Do all the people who have drives but park on the road inform their insurers where they park?

@SnackSizeRaisin

Do all the people who have drives but park on the road inform their insurers where they park?

Yes, there's a bit on the form you fill in that asks where you park. Do you not insure your car?

@Ifailed

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

Cigar divan, please.

I don’t know OP, we have a two car driveway and always park both cars on it. The street is packed with cars so happy to leave that space for those who need it.

In your situation I would get petty and park both cars on the street when you can, just to piss the fuckers off!

I live on a street of three bed 1930s semi’s. Every house has a driveway that runs up the side of the house with space for at least two cars, some can fit three.

Every house also has a garden out front, then space for one car to park on the pavement outside. It’s not really a street where you would park unless you were living or visiting there.

DH and I share one car, we live on a major bus route and both cycle so don’t use the car that often, especially as he now works from home. We always park on the driveway. It’s tight to get in, but we’re used to it, visitors find it a little nerve wracking.

Every other house on the street has two or more cars. Our neighbours opposite, (a couple with no children) have three cars. Our neighbours diagonally opposite have five cars, two of which seem to be unusable on the driveway. Our neighbours next to us, a couple with grown up children (who live elsewhere) have three cars - one each and one for the child when they visit. Our neighbours on the other side have two grown up children living at home and so have four cars.

Someone is always parked outside our house. In fact, when one neighbour moves their car, another jumps straight in to the space. It doesn’t really bother me, but it really seems to wind DH up.

For us it was car size. We didn't even have a particularly large car but if you parked on it, the back always hung over the pavement.

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.

I also live in a 1930s house and we agreed with the neighbours to knock down the central gatepost between our houses. This has made life so much easier.

Our drive is big enough for two cars, and we always park there. However, a combination of new neighbours and new young drivers means there's been an outbreak of Parking Wars on our road, with people competing to park their vehicles alongside the stretch of pavement opposite. One in particular has the agreement of the neighbour directly opposite us that he can park his van over his dropped kerb once he's left for work, to discourage rogue road parking from another neighbour who they don't think should be entitled to park on that particular stretch. This makes backing onto our drive very, very difficult.
I can only conclude that they're all arseholes.
ALL of these people have level driveways that would be much easier to use if everyone else used theirs too, instead of titting around on a narrow road.

Crap driver that can’t park their car.

I hope all those that park on the road declare it to their car insurance company.

I want to get rid of my drive to make more garden. Horses for courses.

Because they have not fathomed out how to work reverse gear to reverse onto their drive I imagine.

rockingllama sounds like a good night out!