Parking wars

[Whoosher]

Another parking thread I’m afraid. Am I within my rights to ask someone not to park outside my door all day..?
backstory:

We live in a semi detached townhouse with a drive and on street parking, our drive is really thin with a metal gate down the neighbours side, my car doesn’t fit on it - I can’t open the doors both sides, and have 5 children including a baby in a car seat who I can’t get in or out if I park on the drive. So DH parks on the drive and I park on the street directly outside of my house. Attached neighbour parks on the street directly outside of their house. The drives are to the sides of the house so where we park is literally outside of our doors.

My DC go to a school that I have to drive to, but there is a school at the end of the joining road to ours, so at school drop off and pick up time lots of cars come and park on our road and the surrounding roads. I leave for school just as these parents are arriving, so once I’m gone someone parks outside of my house but this causes no issues as they’re always gone by the time I get home.

However, for the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed a car parking on our road and staying there all day - I think they work at the school. The last few weekdays she’s arrived just as I’m getting in the car, she waits for me to go then parks outside my house and stays there all day. I know I don’t own the road and it’s not legally my space, but it’s a big inconvenience as I then have to park down the road, which is annoying when I’ve got a baby in a car seat. When I get shopping etc, I have to either leave the baby in the car down the road or in the house while I go up and down the road bringing the shopping in. I’m always lugging things in and out the car - car seats for older kids etc and it’s annoying especially when it’s raining.

There are plenty of on street spaces that aren’t directly outside of someone’s front door, and she can clearly see that I’ve got a baby.. AIBU to ask her to park somewhere else if she’s going to be there all day?

If you aren't willing to out stay her @Whoosher parking over your in driveway and repeatedly blocking her in is your best alternative. If she's still there when husband comes home he can park up the street for a while.

This

or something along the lines of “I know you can park anywhere as it’s a public highway, but you’d be doing me a huge favour if you were able to park somewhere else. Each day I’ve seen you, I’m just about to do the school run and I drive home straight after that and sometimes have to go food shopping. I cannot get my baby out of the car if I park on our drive, and it’s awkward if I park a distance away if I’ve got multiple bags of shopping to carry at the same time as carrying the car seat.”

Lol - tell me you have you no idea what getting 5 children is like, without telling me!!

There you go @Whoosher get 5 kids ready half an hour earlier and sit in front of their school waiting 😂

This. You need to find a way for that space to be unavailable for a prolonged period- put your own car there and get someone else to take your kids to school or use public transport for a few weeks, for example. Inconvenient, yes, but hopefully the person will give up and move on.

She's "deliberately making your life difficult"?! Talk about main character syndrome!

By all means approach her and have a chat (or leave her a friendly, polite note), to see if she would maybe be able and willing to find another space that makes little difference to her but helps you a lot; but how entitled to report her to the school and complain that it's all about you!!

True... disabled people's needs often come right at the very bottom of many people's priorities.

OK, but what happens if your next door neighbour blocks their driveway, reckoning that disabled folk could just use yours? Or do you make careful arrangements between yourselves that there will always be at least one driveway free for the use of wheelchair users at all times?

As for your other point, councils will indeed consider the needs of other members of the community when granting you the favour of dropping their kerb outside your house - even if the catalyst for it is your request because you want to use your drive.

At any rate, why would you not be mindful of how you can share a community resource with others who quite likely need it even more than you do? It seems a very low bar to say that "they would be no worse off", so they shouldn't get to be better off and benefit alongside you?

Even if people can get away with it, the idea of granting a dropped kerb most definitely is not to enable somebody to grab a free, exclusive space on the public road that they can use but nobody else can, just because they happen to have a driveway behind it. It's meant to be for everybody's benefit if keeping a potential space clear enables a car that would otherwise be parked there to not block the flow of traffic; it's awful for people to abuse it by treating it as their own private parking space on the public highway,

Drops for drives are for the drives rather than specifically for disabled people. A road with drives in general will have plentiful dropped kerbs and it’s unlikely that every single one will be blocked, most of my entire road is a drop kerb! Which is hilariously annoying for all the day trippers that drive down my road thinking there’s loads of room to park only to realise it’s all large drive ways 🤣

But she doesn't see you come back with the baby and the shopping etc as she's parked up and gone into work by then. So as far as she knows, you are leaving same time every day to drop all the kids off at school, daycare and go to work for the day.
You can ask, but need to be prepared for a no.

Anyone else heavily invested and want to know if OP has spoken to the other driver?

As a side note we lived on a terraced street many years ago. On the day I was discharged from hospital following the birth of my daughter it was snowing, heavily. I’d had a c-section and been extremely unwell post delivery. When we drove up the street there was no space. My husband knocked on the doors of both cars outside our house and asked if they would mind moving them for 10/15 mins so he could get me and baby inside safely: both refused and said they didn’t know if there would be other spaces and so sorry. I was gobsmacked. Sometimes people just lose all sense of community and regardless of legality yes you’ve paid road tax sometimes the right thing is just that.
I never forgot it. Fastforward a few years and one of them was in need of some help. I reminded them of the above. (Although I helped them - I made them squirm)

Here's my take on it - I don't have a dropped kerb (waiting 2 years for surveyor from council 🙄), I park on my drive to be mindful to the rest of the street as we are pushed for parking down here. Everyone on my road treats my drive as though it has a dropped kerb (very very low pavement), and have NEVER blocked me in; but they don't HAVE to, they have 'chosen' to be mindful and create harmony on the street.

The OP should speak with the lady kindly; and the other lady should have some understanding of the situation; it pays to be mindful rather than be an asshole.

Wow I didn’t expect so many replies on this, thanks everyone for your input

There’s clearly mixed opinions about this so I guess it depends which way of thinking the lady has..

DH got home yesterday when I was out on the afternoon school run and the car was still there plus another car had parked the other side of our drive but hanging over the driveway which made it really difficult for him to get into the drive, he saw this second lady walking away from her car and said to her “excuse me is that your car” to which she replied “no” and carried on walking!

But with the car we’ve been talking about, he didn’t see her leave and neither did I so we didn’t have chance to speak to her

We’ll see what happens this morning! I’m going to try to leave 5 mins earlier (easier said than done with all these kids) to give someone else who will be leaving after the school run the chance to park there and she’ll have to park somewhere else

Will try to answer some of the new questions now.. bare with

This made me laugh.. why should I? And also I do click & collect mostly, so don’t take the baby on the food shop but I still have to go and get the shopping

side note - I actually enjoy going and doing a food shop when I have time, with or without the baby!

A few of you have suggested this, but I don’t think that’s the right thing to do - she isn’t doing anything illegal so I’d probably seem like a CF. I’ll try to speak to her directly instead

It's obviously legally right for her to park there but if I were her and someone with small children asked me to help out by going elsewhere then I would.

Quoting you but in general response to people asking if DH can do something like this, or leave his car and find another way to work etc.. DH drives a van and uses that to work out of (tradesman) so that’s not an option

He also leaves before us most days, and comes back at various times during the day it’s not set work hours, so I can’t rely on him to ever be here when she arrives or leaves, this also makes it complicated for me to park blocking our drive as we’d have to move cars every time he comes back or leaves (plus the fact I said before that I can’t park blocking our drive because I’d be sticking out and obstructing opposite neighbours getting onto their own drive - it’s a narrowish road)

I get what you mean because we have a similar set up. I would be annoyed if someone parked outside my house (we are a culdesac with no through road so it doesn’t happen)
You could leave a note explaining your situation on her car.

I hope you get a positive result, op. I'm sort of thinking....'I've got to drop my 2 kids off at their school (but not too early as not allowed) and still get to the school where I work, park up, scamper in and be logged on before head teacher does a head count. I'm usually lucky and grab a parking spot fairly close to where I work but have to time it right for when the other car leaves for work, life is pretty stressful these days!".....

If you think she works at the school they would gladly speak to her! If you don't like confrontation as you said. Must be tough with 5 kids esp a baby. One day ring the kids school and say we will be 10 mins late and leave then! Is the walk too far for their school? just for 1 day?

I would just politely explain the situation and ask her to consider parking elsewhere. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request if there are spaces elsewhere nearby 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think you should speak politely to her - she probably thinks that you are leaving for the day, so she’s not inconveniencing anyone.

Surely your DH could take your child to school one day so you could speak to her. Or pop out when you are leaving & speak to her himself. Or even just move his car out to ‘save’ the spot for you.

Yeah I’ll keep it as a possibility if nothing changes!

Yes it’s too far, it’s a 10 minute drive down country lanes so no chance of being able to walk. I would if I could!

Everyone saying she’s legally allowed… but cmon has no one got any respect or nous anymore!!
id tell her she’s causing you hassle the likely hood is she won’t park there again because she’ll be worried something will happen to her car!

Huh?

It doesn’t hurt to ask. She may not realise that you need the space during the day. She could think that you’re going to work and she’s being responsible by parking outside someone’s house who isn’t there all day. I’d definitely talk to her and explain the situation but you’ll have to accept it if she still chooses to park there. In the meantime, is there anything you can do to improve the access to your drive? It sounds bonkers!