People who don’t use their drives. Why? 😆

[emmerdaleorcorrie]

I’m really curious about this. I doubt it’s just my area. It doesn’t annoy me or anything like that, but after living in a terrace with on street parking for years, I love having a drive now and can’t wrap my head around people who don’t use theirs. There’s a house a few doors down with 2 cars always parked on the street, while their drive sits empty. I’ve been living here for nearly a year, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car on their drive. I only noticed because one of their cars is always parked on a bend, forcing everyone to drive on the other side of the road to get past.

My whole estate is like this, with cars scattered everywhere, on pavements, and drives just sitting there empty. I know that some people don’t want to play car jenga, having one car in the drive and another on the street, but not using it at all seems a bit odd. Houses with parking usually cost more too. I feel more at ease knowing my car is safer and less likely to get damaged. It also frees up more space for guests.

I don’t know, I just think it’s a little odd, but what can you do. I don’t think there’s a law that saids you have to park on your drive haha. Is there anyone on here that does this? 😆

On our estate, most houses have a car port to fit in 2 cars. The people over the road from us seem to think that they are entitled to their car port spaces and also 2 spaces each on the road.
We get loads of abuse if we park in front of their houses. (It's actually double yellows on our side).

My drive is to the rear of the house behind the garage and not visible form any other property. Access is via a road owned by a utility company for which I have to pay them for an access key. Having suffered an attempted mugging for the key by a neighbour and his son, in the middle of the day, I no longer use the driveway late at night or early in the morning when I have a high chance of meeting him. The police were utterly useless despite me suffering bodily harm.

When we paid for our front garden to be made to a proper drive we had every intention of parking our car and my husband's work van on it. Unfortunately, it turns out the builder didn't do a great job with the foundations so the weight of the van makes it sink. We do still park the car on the drive, and guests with cars park next to us, but the van is on the road round the corner. (We're on a corner plot)

I don't understand this, even if they are just visiting. I have a relatively large driveway, it would take multiple cars. I have to regularly ask visitors to park on the driveway rather than on the road and causing difficulty for neighbours. They can even park on the side of garage so not impacting light etc.

My neighbours sometimes do this. They’re both doctors so I’m guessing they do it because they work unsociable hours and driving on the gravel driveway would be noisy. If it’s not that then I have no idea!

I’m probably not your target audience as I have a very valid reason, but our drive is really narrow and VERY steep. We have a large car and it barely fits and I sheets have a fear it will roll back into the house, so we just park across the drive instead.

We have one car, space on drive for 2 (maybe 3 if one was teeny). DH and I always reverse into drive (à la the Highway Code) we sometimes struggle due to inconsiderate on street parking. Especially those who don’t really park according to the Highway Code.

To PPs who park over dropped kerbs they might help with access to your driveway but they are really meant for those who are wheeling (buggies, prams, wheelchairs, mobility scooters etc) please don’t block them.

There are three men on our street who all park outside their houses rather than on their drives. If one of them can’t park outside his house, he parks on his drive and then moves his car back on the street when the other car has moved. Absolute madness.

To PPs who park over dropped kerbs they might help with access to your driveway but they are really meant for those who are wheeling (buggies, prams, wheelchairs, mobility scooters etc) please don’t block them.

Really? I didn't get mine done (it was there when I moved in) but I have known several people who've paid to have dropped kerbs put in when they've had driveways installed in what was a front garden and their sole purpose was to be able to park, not to make the area more accessible for others. Not cheap either. Surely facilities for people to cross are not provided at random according to which private individuals happen to have paid for driveways to be installed? That doesn't seem an efficient way of doing it? On my road there is very little footfall - it's behind a main road and one way is a dead-end so I'll be continuing to park across my driveway.

I am your annoying neighbour.
Let me explain another point of view -
My drive is very short and more difficult is that there is a steep, short incline that requires you to apply the accelerator, at the exact moment you are less than a foot from the wall. Basically impossible to use without putting a rear light out.
I don't have a big car either!
I've considered strapping up the drive with those pool toys that are long foam tubes!

You are right - adequate dropped kerbs are very important for e.g. wheelchairs, but it's a separate issue to private driveways. That's not what driveway dropped kerbs are intended for.

That is strange behaviour and I have to say I haven't really noticed it much in our estate where everyone has at least a double width drive and some have expanded it to be even bigger. I suppose it is fairly quiet so reversing out isn't a problem.

The nearest we had to this was with a couple who used to live next door but one and owned a motor home. Their drive was big enough to accommodate the motor home with both their other cars tucked around it, and that is what they did when at home. But when they went away in the motor home, which was pretty much every weekend in spring and summer and sometimes for 2 or 3 weeks, they would leave their cars parked on the road opposite our house. Fair enough they had to move the cars to get the motor home out, but it would have taken less than five minutes to put the cars back on their own drive. It might seem a minor thing but it did make it more difficult to get in and out of our drive and if we had visitors they would have to park elsewhere outside somebody else's house. Also, surely if you are away from home you would want cars on your drive to make it look occupied.

Our estate is like this. Every single house has a drive/parking bays outside their house but some people just park on the street. I think it's mostly people with long drives (where cars need to be parked one behind the other) as most of the people with wide drives (where cars are parked side by side) actually use their drives properly. It is very annoying though when there's no spaces for guests in the visitor bays because someone has claimed it as their own. There's also some with drives around the other side of their house that don't use them, I think they're just too lazy to walk an extra few steps. Guessing they regret the drive they got, the side by side ones are the best imo!

My drive is very narrow and at an odd angle to the road making it an absolute pain in the ass to get onto with my (quite large) Vauxhall. It would take a perfect angle and lots of precision and I simply cannot be bothered most of the time.

The latest scam trend in new house building around here is for the garage to be detached and at the far end of the back garden with the doors either facing 90 degrees to the adjacent street if the house is on a corner, or onto a lane, with a parking space or 2 beside the garage (meaning the houses don't need a front garden as no driveway, therefore more profit for the builders). All these house were built in the last 5 years and bought by people who presumably understood the setup - and now all scramble to park their cars on the street outside the front door and block up the roads.

Don't get me started on the house with 1 car on a 3 car driveway that parks a work van and a stupid big RV thing on the street! 😡

The kids like doing chalk drawings on the drive.
It makes it harder to get the bins out.
It makes it harder to open the garage and get bikes / lawnmower out.
Theres plenty of room on our street so nobody is getting annoyed.
The drive is fairly narrow even for our small car. If you line it up perfectly there’s maybe 10 cm each side when getting past the gate so parking on the drive is a bit of a faff.

I lived opposite a lady who had her own driveway but would always park in the road instead. She'd park on the driveway if "her" spot on the road was taken and as soon as they'd move, she'd be out there immediately moving her car from the driveway to the road 😂

She lived alone and didn't have loads of visitors so it wasn't like she was saving the driveway space for someone else. Just bizarre behaviour.

I sometimes park on the street rather than my drive. Mainly because my road is quite busy and there are often lines of cars going in both directions who would all have to wait while I pull across the road to reverse in. Sometimes I do make them, sometimes I dont. There's pretty much always parking spaces so depends if I can be bothered really. If the road is pretty clear I would always park on the drive

We can fit 3 cars on the drive one in front of the other. It's easier to just have one car on there and the other on the road so we aren't constantly having to shift them round. (It wasn't so bad before DH got his new electric car - I didn't mind jumping into his old one instead - but haven't got the hang of his new one).

Colleague from work asked why it's always mine on the road - DH's is newer and the drive has the charger on it.

A neighbour of mine had a dropped kerb and driveway done
Then put battered old plant pots across it so no one can park on it- she doesn't drive (!) but her grown up children and her partner can't park on it either!

We have several in my street. Removed all the parking for everyone else by having dropped kerbs but don’t actually use their driveway. Then complain about people overhanging it a few inches because there’s nowhere to bloody park.

Years back when I did the primary school run there was a man (busybody Norman) who used to go out every morning and afternoon and shout at parents if they were an inch near his driveway for the 30 mins etiher side of pick up. He took to parking his car off his driveway just to stop people being near it but still patrolled and looked out of the window every day. I doubt his car was insured for on road parking...

Urgh this is a real nuisance in our area of several streets of terraces, most of whom have their own existing parking via perfectly good rear access lanes. This doesn’t seem to be used by many, presumably because it requires marginally more effort than parking at the front, so most use on-street parking, and a couple of people have now converted their previously beautiful front gardens into driveways. As well as loss of green habitat and trees, it makes the pavements more dangerous as there are now cars crossing (its opposite a little play park, and next to a big school, so lots of children around). This also means that those spaces are essentially reserved for the house owner alone, and it is a busy area near shops and GP, so parking is in high demand.

One in particular parks so thoughtlessly (well, actually quite aggressively) that in Mumsnet fashion I’ve drawn a diagram. He has a drive, never uses it even though he can literally drive straight off it into the road. Instead he parks half-over his H bar, taking up another space. If anyone else parks next to his drive, he will park so close as to be touching. He can’t get blocked in as there are double yellows after his drive, so he’s protected. It’s completely unnecessary - selfish twat. He’s the blue car in the diagram. There should be space for two other cars in the gap, but the way he parks means the second space is unusable (he will deliberately block in anyone who parks there). I hate that something so apparently trivial as parking is such a cause of annoyance.

TBH, I have a strong objection to dropped kerbs and off-street parking altogether in many places, particularly busy towns. On new estates fair enough, but the selfishness of taking a whole stretch of parking out of use on town streets - and even worse if the owner doesn’t even use the drive - really pisses me off.

I’d favour a law that allowed parking across a drive if there’s no car in it at the time.

My PIL won’t use their drive as they paid a lot of money for block paving and don’t want to ruin it.