AIBU -it’s a parking one!

[Wvutr22]

I’m fully prepared to be told AIBU because technically I know I am! But here we go!!
In our street all of the houses barring ours and our next door neighbour’s have as minimum a double driveway, single garage and then space for everyone to also park a car in front of their own house. So ample parking even if people are a 3 car household (which some are). So far, so good.
There is a parking bay in front of our house that can fit between 3-4 cars in, parallel parked (depending on the size of the cars). This was put in when our houses were built and I think it was designed for our house and our neighbour’s house to use as we’re the only two houses with a single driveway. We’ve lived here for 18 years and this has always worked well. No issues.
Here comes my AIBU! For the past year or so we’ve increasingly had a number of people parking their cars/vans/taxis in the bay who don’t live here. They park up (often for days at a time without moving) and walk off out of the street (so they’re not visiting anyone in the vicinity). Mildly annoying when we have family to visit and there’s nowhere to park but it is what it is.
However, we are a two car family and it’s now at the point where we can’t get parked. We can’t really park across the top of our drive without affecting our neighbour’s access to their driveway, or blocking our other car onto the drive.
I know the parking bay isn’t ours. We have no right to it. Anyone with a taxed car has just as much right to park there as we do. Etc. Etc. But AIBU by getting REALLY annoyed by this?
(ps we don’t live in a town/city, everyone has lots of private parking in the other neighboring streets and when we’ve been walking the dog we’ve seen where the taxi owner lives and they have a block paved frontage that could easily fit 4 vehicles on and sometimes it’s empty while the taxi is in the bay in front of our house! It’s a big multiple seater van thing rather than a car, so I suspect they just don’t want to look at it from their living room window so park in front of us instead…)

Yeh it sucks but like you’ve said - not a lot you can do 😣 I’d block your car in with the second car. This might be inconvenient for your neighbour too but you have to park somewhere.

Legally they can, but morally it’s really inconsiderate

Why don't you just use the bays yourself instead?

We have this problem around where I live too. Multiple blocks of flats have been built in surrounding streets, and they charge for parking, so rather than pay, the residents park in our cul de sac. Their cars and vans are often left for days at a time, are parked on the corner of the rd so you can't see the traffic when you are trying to get out, block part of the rd, or park on a blind corner. They don't care because we aren't their neighbours, although I often wonder if their ears are burning as vitriol is swapped in the local whatsapp group.

This is what we always do, but when we’re at work/out and then get home, the bay is full of vehicles belonging to people that don’t live in the street or the neighbouring two streets either side of ours. So now we can’t get parked.

If those spaces were meant for your house specifically they would have been allocated on your deeds regardless of the orientation of your driveway. It sounds like you have a smaller house with a smaller driveway and are relying on public parking that everyone is entitled to use

As the council for permit parking perhaps

It would be such a pity if something happened to the cars and vans while they were parked there overnight. Such as wild bird seed scattered judiciously over the windscreen so that the birds who come at first light to eat their fill crap all over it. An apparemt Act of God for which no human is responsbile.

Yes, you’re correct (as I said in my OP). We have no legal right to park there and they are just as entitled (legally) to park there. My AIBU however is that just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you should. As previous posters have said, they’re legally not wrong but it’s not ‘the done thing’.

🤣 imagine!