Why do some people think that they own the road outside their homes?

[Isitafullmoon]

I'm trying to get my head around the mentality of people who do this.

Once dh and I had to pull over somewhere, we weren't even getting out of the car we'd just pulled over to take a call sort of thing. We were outside some houses but not blocking anyone's drive or obstructing the road. We weren't parked illegally or on the pavement or anything like that.

No sooner had we pulled over but a quite aggressive man came out knocking on our car window and told us that we can't park outside his house and to move on. He wouldn't go until we left so we just moved and pulled over further up the road.

Another time we drove into a cul de sac to look at a house that was for sale, as we drove into the road, a woman came out shouting at us that we were 'not allowed' in here. Again this wasn't a private estate or a gated community just a normal cul de sac.

Then today I was turning around in a cul de sac when a woman came out shouting at me to go away and waving her arms. Again I was simply turning round not doing anything illegal or blocking anyone.

Are there people who spend their days waiting by the window just to go and shout at random people?

Well in our case we do own it. Maybe it's a private road and they do too?

This wouldn't bother me at all and your brother's neighbour sounds bonkers quite frankly. But, I lived in a cul de sac for 3 years and many people parked like twats. My neighbours grandson for example, always parked outside my house when visiting, not blocking access to my drive but left the back of his car overhanging which meant I couldn't turn when leaving and ended up having to do a bloody 6 point turn just to get out! The funny thing was my neighbour had a drive big enough to fit 3 cars on yet he still parked outside my house and made it extremely difficult for me. Some people just don't care!

In my experience, it's nearly always boomers in cul de sacs. My DC go to a school with no car park and hardly and road space for parking. The nearby houses are all cul de sacs. Yes it must be annoying living next to a school, but that is the owners choice, and it's for 15-20 minutes twice a day. I have not once witnessed anyone park infront of a drive, but I have had parents in my dcs class who live in the neighbouring road tell me I am welcome to park across their drive if I need to. The couple of occasions I have taken them up on this, there have been emails to school that there have been complaints about parking over drives.

I once parked outside a house, I had to park close to the car in front to make sure I didn't block the drive. A man was watching me in his living room window with his arms crossed. Then he came out to get something from his boot. Before he had chance to complain, I reversed, so he could gain easy access to his boot. He rummaged in it, took nothing out, and closed if again and walked back in the house. Then I moved my car back. His double drive was empty! Cul de sac owners love to complain about bad parking while hogging the public road themselves and never using their own drive.

The windscreen washer part was a joke. But otherwise, why not? Some lunatic comes at me in their dressing down waving their hands and telling me to move, they’re fair game.

Do you think they care about the person they’re harassing for having the cheek to park their car on the public road?

So just let them harass and bully people into moving their car then?

Arg, I hate this.
I used to visit my grandad, and he lived at the end of a cul de sac. A few times, I would park my motorbike (so it didn't even take up much room!), to have a person run out and tell me to be gone by a certain time because they were expecting visitors.

I once had to stop outside a house on a busy main road once as my car had broken down. Big red brick houses well set back from the road.
An angry woman with a huge broom came to sweep the pavement in an aggressive manner. She was glaring and sweeping up dust onto my car.
I wound my window down to explain that I wasn’t there by choice and was waiting for the breakdown service.
She really wasn’t happy at all.

Also, my mum was parked up somewhere on work business. A lady come out saying she could not park there (another person claiming to own the street outside their property). My mum calmly explained why she was there and how long she was going to be. She got on with her job, and came back to her car to find her windscreen wipers had been bent and snapped off.

These are the exact same miserable selfish fuckers who complain about little children playing.

Well, some people do(I'm one of them, my street has allocated parking spaces for those of us who've chosen to have a front yard rather than a drive, so we own the land up to the centre of the street) however if someone parked there while my car wasn't there and they weren't staying long I certainly wouldn't shout at them! I probably wouldn't say anything until I needed to park there and even then I'd just park somewhere else.
Some folk just have sad lives and want to feel important. Even if I needed to park there if I saw someone pull up I'd just politely ask them to move. But then I'm not a total arsehole.

Because they are absolute tools

I have to admit that I was like this at one point. I was 22 and heavily pregnant (had already had a substantial subchorionic haemorrhage) and finally moved into a rented house of our own. Then DP was prone to horrendous epileptic fits, he'd go into stasis every time and would be in ICU for weeks put into a coma then trying to bring him back out of it. Brain damage built up every time.
We were at the end of a very busy street, loads of families, the pavements covered in loads of cars on and off the kerb, cars constantly parked outside our house and it made me panic that we couldn't get an ambulance down there if he or I needed it. So I put a note on a car explaining the situation. It didn't stop but from then on we were known as "the goths at number X being ridiculous". I think I had a point.
When I went into labour my parents were able to pull in just beyond the cars on the actual road in front of our house to take me to hospital, I had to waddle out between the cars to get to parents car in severe pain with contractions coming hard and fast. It's not always someone getting arsey about parking. Sometimes there's valid reasons for people to worry.

My neighbours go the opposite way and obsessively park outside their own houses, often across their dropped kerbs and half on the pavement. They both have drives and do use them but sometimes have to shuffle cars and leave one on the road or direct their visitors to park as above.

Outside their houses the road is substantially narrower than outside ours plus we don't have a house opposite and instead have a sort of lay by thing that you can fit three cars in. I'd much prefer they park outside ours, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest and would be safer for pavement users and easier for the bin men and ambulances etc to get through! As it is I sometimes can't turn right out of my drive when they're both parked blocking their own drives. Ah well.

Never had this issue, what area do you live in so I can avoid it?!

I'll never forget the time I was driving around (and around and around...) to get DD2 to sleep when she was a baby. She finally dropped off, so I pulled over and got out my book and started to read. There was a knock on my car window and when I rolled it down a woman snottily told me I needed to move my car from outside of her house because I was "making her children very nervous." There was a pavement, a wall and an absolutely massive front garden between the road and house. I didn't even respond, just closed the window on her and got back to my book. Some people are absolutely batshit.

It's annoying when you can't get in outside your house and have to park a good walk away though. And then walk back to the car in the morning. (I don't have a drive, it's on street parking.) We had a neighbour who was a bit of a self appointed parking warden for the street but he's moved now. The rest of us don't really have time to harass people for parking.

We gave up our car last year but the driveway is used for my family who visit regularly, tradesmen, workmen, my hairdresser. It’s so annoying for my daughters and other members of the family two of them coming long distances and they can’t get into the driveway. Then have to park up the road when visitors to my neighbours and others think it is okay to park right across the driveway when there are spaces elsewhere.Recently a visitor to my neighbours parked across my driveway and then broke down. My neighbours came to apologise but they couldn’t move it. It was there until the next day when my disabled daughter was visiting from a 200 mile journey.

Both our neighbours are like this. The neighbour to our left told us off for parking in the street outside our house when we had a skip in the driveway for renovation works. Once the skip went and we had builders in, he started parking outside our house to stop the builders parking there.

Our neighbour to the right once berated and quite upset our cleaner who parked in front of their house. She was coming for two hours every two weeks. Now they park on the street instead of their driveway every Thursday morning until she parks elsewhere then move their car back in. Our street is a bit of a cut through and hardly anyone parks on the street so it's not like, in either case, the parking prevents them getting close to their home and it's never near their driveway entrance, it's simply on the street in front of their house. Unless a car was abandoned for weeks I couldn't tell you who was outside my house.

We don't get precious over parking, but I can see why others on our cul-de-sac do. People park like dicks. Forgive the God awful sketch but this is what our street is like:
Pink = Houses (the one with the scribble is mine)
Black lines = house & drive separation
Green scribbles = parkable curb
Red = household car
Brown = guest car

The cul-de-sac is a curved street that goes uphill. People with more than 2 cars will park over their own dropped kerb. Then visitors will park on the tiny bits of un dropped kerb, which basically edge over residents drives making it hard to see, or reverse out. This picture is on a good day. It's regularly a struggle to get out without hitting someone's car. Especially on an evening when everyone is home. There's utility works at the moment and because we're on the only bit of the cul-de-sac without a curve, on a morning when it's quiet, work men will park their van and trailer across our drive blocking DH in, and then act like he's unreasonable asking them to move so he can drive to work. The annoying thing is, if they just knocked and asked, he would pull the car out, and let them park over our drive while they work because the drive is empty all day and they've gone before he gets back.

Further up the cul-de-sac is even worse. There's regular arguments between a family with 4/5 cars and their neighbour because they're forever blocking the neighbours in or parking in the turning circle forcing everyone else to reverse down the hill. One of the reasons we're moving is to escape the parking dramas.

Yes, same here. Our neighbour has 9 cameras around her house so she can monitor everyone’s movement 24 hours a day. For example, if both my husband and I are out, she’ll then pop out her house to have a snoop around our property. Within seconds of people parking in front of her house, she’s there shaking her head. You’re guaranteed a note under your windscreen wiper.

Sometimes she takes videos of ‘illegal’ parking, making sure to highlight the car reg, and puts it on the internet.

i had a lady annoyed at me for walking past her house with my dog, i live on the high street, imagine if i did that to people walking past my house!

I pulled over to take a call on a suburban street one day and a young lady pulled up in front of me and started reversing really closely in front of me. She was gesticulating quite angrily, shooing me away backwards with her hand. I just did a hand movement like "huh?" And kept going with my call. She carried on, honked at me, her mum came out and started yelling at me from across the street. So I ignored them and stayed on my call. Then it finished and I pretended to be on for longer.

The mum then called ME a Karen! I wasn't doing anything wrong! I was pulled over safely taking a call, and her little miss wanted my park. It wasn't even out the front of their house. It was a bizarre interaction all round

People are just entitled a lot of the time and their rude behaviour has made someone move before so they're continuing to do it

Then there was the time we moved to a new rented property and parked in front of our house.

On the first day living there we got a knock at the door. It was our next door neighbour. Thought it was a friendly "welcome to the neighbourhood" but she proceeded to tell me "my 21 yo daughter uses that spot outside your house for her car, so you'll have to share it with her".
They have a double garage with space on the drive to fit two more cars.
I did (and do) share it with her but only because I hate frosty neighborly relations. And I'm a pushover apparently