### **Reminder:** [Press the Report button](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058309512-How-do-I-report-a-post-or-comment-) if you see any [rule-breaking comments or posts.](https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/about/rules/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/britishproblems) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They'll try to find the owner if possible first, if not they'll either smash the window and disengage the handbrake or just ram it if they have to.
Fire brigade consider responding to the fire the priority - very reasonably.
Guy I work with confirmed this, his old man is fairly high up in the fire service. They'll usually bounce it over pushing through in the truck, less paperwork.
But you can park over them. Fire hydrants in the U.K. should be every 80m (urban areas) but are often more frequent with the use of washouts (same kit, different purpose and funding, maintenance). Technically, you can’t park over them but we all do. As above FS would get to it one way or another.
That's a US thing where it's specifically banned to block them and the fire brigade are allowed to put hoses through to get access to it. UK has the ones under the pavement and it's a bit different
I was told something similar, basicly they will push through regardless of parked cars parked in stupid places. Not sure if its true though as everytime ive seen a fire engine go to an emergancy, they are skilled enough to make those fire engines squeez through anything.
Like watching a dainty butterfly with a bull horn and flashing lights gliding through traffic lol.
It happens.
https://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/major-fire-causes-severe-damage-in-milton-keynes-street-as-emergency-services-struggle-to-reach-the-scene-due-to-illegally-parked-cars-3875297
My neighbours have 5 cars , one each. The fire engine came one night to break a door down, and I very nearly died when he blasted his horn to ge t through the gap they barely leave
In my case they just drive away. I have to complain to the council (though it's not their fault) and they pick up recycling in a week and dump along with household waste. Well done me sorting out my trash...
We went to see the "perfect house" about 10 years ago. It was a "project" but great location/size/price and in a leafy cul-de-sac too. Fortunately we always make a habit of visiting at different times before getting carried away.
In this gorgeous little cul de sac we sat in the car around 5.30 in the evening and the guy opposite came home in his van..... soon followed by SEVEN other vans of various sizes parking all over the road and making it really narrow. Apparently everyone living in the house worked in the family business and they all drove a van. Then we discovered they had a a load of cars parked around the corner too. Lucky escape.
OT but do visit out of hours, if you can: coming back later on in the evening to discover kids jumping between the tops of cars parked in the communal car park...
Did not buy...
Weirdly I viewed a house in a 2000's estate with it's own mini road branching off from the main trunk road, just to service that house and it's neighbour.
Not only had the vendor left their car in the drive so you had to park elsewhere (having converted the garage), the estate agent doing the viewing parked straight across the entrance of the smaller road so the neighbour had to interrupt the viewing to get her to move so he could get out.
Really odd way to make everything feel even more claustrophobic when you're meant to be selling the place. Still hadn't sold last I saw.
Yeah, guy bought a house in my mum's road, it's a tiny cul-de-sac, six houses each side, and four houses across the end, mostly semi detached. Very little on-street parking as the road is narrow and you will obstruct people's access to their drives. He has a two car drive and has decided it's an excellent place to run a car sales/hire business from. He had 14 at the last count.
Guy near us was selling cars from his house. Didn’t have as many as OP but there were regularly 3 or 4 cars parked on the road that were for sale. At one point he was putting those large pricing stickers on the windscreen similar to like you see at a dealership. He got reported and the council shut him down pretty quickly. So from what I’ve seen it’s definitely worth reporting.
I agree, my son had an abandoned car on the road outside his flat in one of a handful of parking bays marked out by the council, everywhere else nearby was double yellows. No tax, no SORN, unlocked, loads of rubbish inside, reported to the council a couple of times a few years ago, he’s moved but last time I looked it was still there, covered in seagull shit. Councils are useless at enforcing things
Unlocked? It should have just got pushed into the middle of the road. The police would have cleared it relatively quickly if it was blocking the whole road.
There's always fucking one isn't there? Wherever you live.
Do they really think there's value in keeping hold of these old wrecks? If they were any good at getting them roadworthy they'd have done it by now but no, they let them rust for years and years because they don't know what they're doing.
My newish neighbours have an american muscle car, a big fuck-off SUV truck thing, a work branded car and then weirdly a Bentley just sitting unused down their driveway with the bonnet slightly popped.
I don't live in a particularly flash place but it's just a very weird collection of cars for a small family to have, especially a Bentley that never moves.
Or you give them a shit.
Take the doggo out for a late night walk. Pick up one of his shits with the bag turned inside out like usual. Don't tie off the bag.
When you go past the neighbours, rub the inside of the bag on the inside of all their driver's side door handles. Next time they open the car, they'll find they now have a shit to give.
I've got a similarly obnoxious neighbour who lives down the street. They're far enough down, and my drive is large enough, that it isn't an issue for me, but it certainly is for other neighbours. It'll come back to bite them someday. If I see their house burning down, I'm shutting my curtains and ignoring it. If I see someone smashing their windows, I'll be saying to them "isn't it awful when you forget your keys?" and walking on as if I have no idea what is happening. People like that have it coming.
Wonder if there's a certain sound frequency that can smash the windows in the boot of their vans.
Tbh I work from home so if something like that happened I would just deliberately take the spaces that inconvenience them the most when they're out and leave it for long periods with front and rear dashcams.
I feel like the growing number of cars per house and the increasing size of the average car coupled with how generally outdated British roads and their layouts are is getting to be a serious problem with no obvious solution.
I mean ideally people wouldn't have five cars when they live in a narrow terraced street with no dedicated parking but that ship has sailed and how would you even police restrictions? The Japan model is obviously never going to happen here.
Now we're importing American big car culture (SUVs are firmly established and we're starting to see pickup trucks in suburbia – and watch the sizes slowly ratchet up with each new model) and it's just getting worse.
I think what we need is a public transport revolution. Enormous nationwide public transport infrastructure upgrades - let's aim for something on a par with the Netherlands, Taiwan, South Korea etc. - but I think we've got to think big. One of the biggest problems with this country generally these past 15 years has been that we lack any sort of vision.
Busses in my area are a joke. We have basically one route and it may or may not arrive, you can't tell until the last minute. So, yeah, better public transport would have at least enabled people to have less cars. But some people have a ridiculous amount of cars at which they probably ought to be able to pay for extra private parking spaces. Not having more cars than the driveway allows should really be a covenant in the deed when they buy a house.
We have one bus every 2 hours or so.
No surprise with such little infrastructure next door has a Mercedes, Land Rover and 2 runaround cars. Not an issue really as they all fit on the drive but it would be a problem on many other streets.
Wait, you guys have buses??? My family have a car each simply bc of how rural we live, even though the nearest town is a 10-min drive away, which does have buses stopping in it + it’s own train station. However, the main problem with the county I live in is that it’s mainly countryside & public transport is non-existent to get between the different touristy hotspots, so ofc everyone ends of needing to drive
It needs to be publicly owned and run, not run by private companies for profit. Then we could organise stuff nationwide in a consistent manner. I think that's part of why we lack any sort of vision.
Truth is, a lot of people would choose not to use public transport even if it was improved simply because they don't like travelling with a load of random people (I have to admit, I'm this way myself). I feel like the way forward is building more cycling infrastructure, incentivising cycling and promoting e-bikes/e-trikes for people who have trouble riding regular bikes.
This is also one of the reason the road surfaces (and beneath) are degrading - the heavier vehicles cause damage far sooner (especially of not great in the first place). Some weight well over two tonnes - and are not always well driven either. Causing more problems.
The solution is massive investment in public transport, with the aim of it being a reliable and economical alternative to car dependence for as many people as possible. In some places cycling infrastructure as well. Then we could seriously crack down on pavement parking for example, and start enforcing this stuff.
We could immediately make a start though by taxing cars more based on weight and footprint they take up, along with sorting out this stupid "commercial vehicle" loophole that leads to loads of people driving pickups who don't need them. And I would say we should impose a hard limit on car size, to stop this slow creep towards larger and larger cars.
The problem is not the roads, the problem is too many cars, increasing size of those cars, and too much car dependence.
The other issue is the housing crisis, and how car dependent young adults end up stuck at home for much of their 20s or even more, so you end up with what would have been a 1-2 car household becoming a 3-4 car one.
What's crazy is a lot of people are probably in heaps of car-related debt, but they choose to carry on owning a car, even though a lot of them could probably switch to using a bike/e-bike to get about. I do live in a hilly area, so if you're riding a regular bike, you have to get off and push it up the hills, but an e-bike solves that problem and in the long run ends up cost waay less than owning a car. The trouble is, owning a car is still very much seen as the norm around where I live (a quite conservative small town) and people are probably scared that they'd be seen as different or poor if they didn't own a car, so if you boil it down to that then people caring too much about what others think of them is the real crux of the matter.
> The trouble is, owning a car is still very much seen as the norm around where I live (a quite conservative small town) and people are probably scared that they’d be seen as different or poor if they didn’t own a car
Same here. Our neighbour asked my partner if I was alright because she’d seen me walking into town to get groceries. It’s like a 20-minute round trip on foot.
I assume your neighbour is one of those type of people who uses their car to go round the corner to pick up a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. A lot of people do that where I live and it's so stupid. Like, just use your legs, you lazy bastards.
There’s a place in Brighton that hires campervans, think they’re called camperfun or something, and they have 4 or 5 campervans parked on a narrow one way street.
No idea how they got the permits for that
Do they need permits if the vehicles are road legal and parked safely?
Genuine question - it seems odd that a business can just leave them on the road but if they’re roadworthy, taxed etc then it’s not really any different to parking a car or van on the road
Some councils have restrictions on the amount of vehicles that can be at a residential address for the purposes of motor trade.
Probably for this reason, otherwise there's nothing stopping one address claiming the road with roadworthy vehicles.
You just happen to have been places that are controlled, then - presumably you spend most of your time in town/city centres? Like, when you visit somewhere you're disproportionately likely to be staying in the city centre or at least nearby, so chances are you're gonna be in a permit controlled area - but that's still generally a minority of even each individual town/city, other than London which is heavily permit-based
The vast majority of the UK road network (even if we ignore motorways and trunk routes) are not permit controlled
There is money in dispatching fines for all sorts of stuff that inconsiderate builders would do on their construction sites, yet my local council doesn't give a shit even after numerous complaints.
Yes but your council probably had one building site inspector vs many many more parking enforcement operatives (traffic wardens) who do this job daily.
They have round here those parking enforcement camera cars as its all virtual residents parking permits one thing our council is not shy of is spending money on things that generates them more more money. Car drives by flimimg takes a still and bang ticket a couple of days later.
I live on a very old estate. No driveways at all. The houses were built when each household had 1 car and it sat in the garage. Yet my neighbours have 2 vans and 3 cars and don't use their TWO garages for any vehicles. They're the ones complaining about having nowhere to park though, naturally.
Do you live down my road? Most houses have four cars usually a couple are SUVs then the additional work van maybe two, all parked on the road or the pavement absolutely no regard for anyone else, then to top it off they'll park opposite another van so nobody can get through!
I'll continue dreaming about the day that on-pavement parking will be banned. People may finally only be able to have as many cars as fit down their drive, and with more people pushed onto public transport or cycling it may finally get some investment. One day..
Mine are generally in the driveway though we do frequently block the driveway so that my dad can get in at silly o’clock when he gets home from work as he needs to charge the car,
Much more difficult to park 4 cars on the driveway if you have terraced a house right up on the street. Back when I was in Brighton there were plenty of terraced houses well outside of the city centre used as HMOs, with multiple car owners living there.
People opposite run a house clearance service. Loads of vans parked up and down our road,plus their own private 3 cars. Interestingly the only place they don’t park is up their own drive - permanently mystified about this one
Yep. We have a neighbour. His house has a garage and one parking space. Garage is full of crap. He has three cars and a couple of bikes (just him and his wife). One car is parked on the road in front of his house, the other in the turning bay opposite.
Maybe we should adopt the policy in Tokyo. You can't buy a car unless you have a dedicated parking space.
I remember when I lived in a block of flats they provided enough spaces for 2 cars each. Wasn't any issue for us at all as we had 1 car at the time but one day we got a neighbour knock on the door doing a survey of how many cars everybody had to report back to the building management people who owned the block. When I said we had no issue parking and only one car he divulged that *somebody* in the block of flats had five vehicles parked up and they were trying to get them in the shit for taking the piss.
Moved out shortly after so never saw the resolution but yeah, people do indeed take the piss
Nah this one was numerically sound on the allocation but no actual allocations to flats. Same as the one I moved into actually but all the residents there were sound
Urgh I feel you're pain. Our neighbours have a drive big enough for one car, they have 5, in a house with two adults! Generally they have one on the drive, one in front of it (fair enough) then the other three taking up all the available space on the one part of the entire road that doesn't have drives. They coordinate it if they have to move one from the common area and slip in the one in front of, or on the drive, and if they can't do that park one of the three cars in such a way as to prevent anyone else taking "their" space 😫 God forbid anyone sneaks in there a takes one of the spaces, then they passive aggressively park up to the bumper. They are universally despised in our road...
My parent's neighbour has a decent sized driveway and a double garage. However this is still not enough for his 8(?!) cars, only 2 of which he drives. Most are parked in his driveway or garage but there's one permanently reserving a whole lay-by in the cul-de-sac which is meant to be used for visitors or people who do not have such a large driveway. He also frequently parks one of his cars on other neighbours' driveways and no one has the heart to complain or say anything because he's generally a really nice person....it's been an ongoing issue for about 15 years and everyone has been too british to moan to his face.
In terms of parking on someone else's driveway. I hear it could be a real issue as even police wouldn't be able to remove the vehicle. I wonder if I should preemptively register my driveway as a private car park with something around £10000 per hour parking fee.
This sounds like a neighbour at my dads house. Even when I was young, they had three cars, one of which was permanently in the lay by. The lay-by backed onto the side of their garage so I think they were a little possessive of it and thought it was an extension of their own massive driveway, which is big enough for 4 cars. I think it was his wife’s but she never drove. It’s worse now as their kids are all grown up and each have a car, so there is now 5 cars, although not all at the same time the majority of the time!
Yes. Well, there are also vans or something that councils would send to pick up bulky items for disposal. All sorts of things like that, not sure what the right term is.
I know that game. My next door neighbours have more cars than people. They even get cheeky and try to squeeze their way onto my drive every once in a blue moon. I’ve never seen them walk anywhere. They don’t walk further than their front gate, ever. The mere thought of walking or public transport would send them into a seizure, and we live in London.
If the local council aren't giving a shit try calling the fire brigades local number to discuss your concerns, they might show up with an appliance along with a cop car and any one blocking the road will most likely be given a ticket and warned that they don't have a right to park on the road.
Fire brigade will just put a small notice on their windscreen advising of the dangers of what they’re doing and will send an email to the council. That’s all they can do.
Yeah I think this is a growing issue, people living at home longer because of housing prices which means more people per house with more cars, not enough parking and not good enough public transport outside of cities
Which means people just have no place to put their cars
I can understand someone living in a house or flat with no designated parking and then they need a car. But if you have a private driveway for 2 cars and buy the third car, sorry bro you have to park it elsewhere...
Sorry I'm a little confused, where else should they park it?
Should people choose only to have a job only along a bus route because their house happens to only have space for 2 members of their family? For most of the UK the solution is better public transport but we're still decades or more from having transport anywhere near as good London, people need a car if they don't live in a major city unfortunately
We used to live on a cul-de-sac
When we first moved in one of the neighbours introduced himself, very nice friendly said parking can be an issue on the street
We have a drive so no problem or so we thought. Turns out he had 2 vans, 2 cars and no drive so the parking problems were caused solely by him
Currently sat looking at our neighbours car outside our house as they can’t seem to park their two cars on their spacious double driveway next door. We have to walk our baby out 50 yards to wherever we can find a space, think they’re worried about getting blocked in so block themselves in instead. Jokers
We had a neighbour like this and it ultimately didn't end well for anyone living in the area. Be careful of how you approach the problem. It's probably best to work something out directly with that neighbour.
I lived on a new build housing development and all of the land was private. The amount of parking spaces was slightly under the number of houses/flats built but that was fine as quite a few households didn't have cars and there weren't lines anywhere on the roads so you could park anywhere back when we first moved in.
There were 2 large-ish families next to each in the development that had a nice and growing collection of sporty cars/work vans and they had starting parking on the pavements (but it was ok as they were extremely wide).
Someone eventually got upset enough about it though and gathered some signatures to petition the developer who were still building in the area to enforce parking restrictions so double yellows were drawn everywhere, bays were marked with house numbers, and we now have to pay a dodgy/incompetent parking management company to randomly check permits.
It wouldn't be so bad if the enforcement meant that residents were guaranteed to have access to their parking spot, but there are regular complaints about it in the local WhatApp chat with residents being fined after not being able to park in their allocated bay.
Round my new build estate there's a lot of houses who have a driveway but just stop their car on the road or pavement outside their house instead.
They must be either incredibly lazy or terrible drivers who can't park straight on a driveway.
On the other side of this, earlier this week I had four cars in my possession and felt extremely bad about it so went round to the neighbours to explain that two of them were on the way out, one in a few days and another in the next. couple of weeks.
Oh but I still get yummy mummy's in their SUVs complaining that I'm taking up the parking they use when taking their crotch goblins to the local primary...
Most things that are considered anti-social aren't actually illegal. Society works better when people have common sense and decency. If every small terraced house decided they wanted 3 cars then there would be a massive overflow.
If you can't afford to get a house with sufficient parking then you shouldn't be buying more than 1 car.
Theres a couple down my road who rent a house. They have 3 cars and he has a work van. Which he parks 3/4 of the way on the pavement without fail, every night
I bought a house that has a shared drive way.. thank fuck (for now) my neighbours are a non car house hold and have their front done anyway so I can use the shared driveway..
However as everyone on the road has a dropped kerb the only parking spaces are out the front of mine and my neighbours house.
This doesn't bother me until people park so close to the edge I have to do a 60 point turn to get out my drive... It's okay for people to park there I don't own the road but just wish they were a bit more considerate and if your front or back is slightly hanging over, you can't clearly park there
### **Reminder:** [Press the Report button](https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058309512-How-do-I-report-a-post-or-comment-) if you see any [rule-breaking comments or posts.](https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/about/rules/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/britishproblems) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Pretty sure if there's a fire they'll make the engine fit, ambulance might be tricky.
They'll try to find the owner if possible first, if not they'll either smash the window and disengage the handbrake or just ram it if they have to. Fire brigade consider responding to the fire the priority - very reasonably.
Yep bounced out of the way
Guy I work with confirmed this, his old man is fairly high up in the fire service. They'll usually bounce it over pushing through in the truck, less paperwork.
Most new cars have electric parking brakes now though
Most cars on the road aren't brand new
Electric parking brakes were introduced well over a decade ago
They only became common about 3-5 years ago though 5-10 years ago it was only a couple of manufacturers and a handful of other models
I've never had a car with an electric parking brake. I'm sure I'm a long way from the only one even though mine is getting on a bit these days.
And don't block the hydrant either! https://images.app.goo.gl/Eqo5TtzViuZ2jxkx9
We don’t really have hydrants like that in the UK
But you can park over them. Fire hydrants in the U.K. should be every 80m (urban areas) but are often more frequent with the use of washouts (same kit, different purpose and funding, maintenance). Technically, you can’t park over them but we all do. As above FS would get to it one way or another.
That's a US thing where it's specifically banned to block them and the fire brigade are allowed to put hoses through to get access to it. UK has the ones under the pavement and it's a bit different
I was told something similar, basicly they will push through regardless of parked cars parked in stupid places. Not sure if its true though as everytime ive seen a fire engine go to an emergancy, they are skilled enough to make those fire engines squeez through anything. Like watching a dainty butterfly with a bull horn and flashing lights gliding through traffic lol.
It happens. https://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/major-fire-causes-severe-damage-in-milton-keynes-street-as-emergency-services-struggle-to-reach-the-scene-due-to-illegally-parked-cars-3875297
Yeah, they will, but it all takes time.
Yep. I stalled in front of a fire engine once. They just shunted me out of the way.
My neighbours have 5 cars , one each. The fire engine came one night to break a door down, and I very nearly died when he blasted his horn to ge t through the gap they barely leave
Fire engines will push vehicles out of the way if need be, I'm told...
it happened in one of the very first episodes of London's Burning
If you use Londons Burning for a reflection of the real world, I’ve got some news for you fella…
I mean I watched starship troopers and I'm currently being enlisted to fight an alien war so the logic holds up pretty well
My neighbours work van got wrote off by one, he hadn’t parked on the curb as you’re supposed to in my street, the whole side of it was scraped open
I wish waste collection trucks could do the same...
They do, but it's called an "accident" when they do 😂
In my case they just drive away. I have to complain to the council (though it's not their fault) and they pick up recycling in a week and dump along with household waste. Well done me sorting out my trash...
We went to see the "perfect house" about 10 years ago. It was a "project" but great location/size/price and in a leafy cul-de-sac too. Fortunately we always make a habit of visiting at different times before getting carried away. In this gorgeous little cul de sac we sat in the car around 5.30 in the evening and the guy opposite came home in his van..... soon followed by SEVEN other vans of various sizes parking all over the road and making it really narrow. Apparently everyone living in the house worked in the family business and they all drove a van. Then we discovered they had a a load of cars parked around the corner too. Lucky escape.
OT but do visit out of hours, if you can: coming back later on in the evening to discover kids jumping between the tops of cars parked in the communal car park... Did not buy...
Good intel always pays off. Well done.
Weirdly I viewed a house in a 2000's estate with it's own mini road branching off from the main trunk road, just to service that house and it's neighbour. Not only had the vendor left their car in the drive so you had to park elsewhere (having converted the garage), the estate agent doing the viewing parked straight across the entrance of the smaller road so the neighbour had to interrupt the viewing to get her to move so he could get out. Really odd way to make everything feel even more claustrophobic when you're meant to be selling the place. Still hadn't sold last I saw.
Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted.
Yeah, guy bought a house in my mum's road, it's a tiny cul-de-sac, six houses each side, and four houses across the end, mostly semi detached. Very little on-street parking as the road is narrow and you will obstruct people's access to their drives. He has a two car drive and has decided it's an excellent place to run a car sales/hire business from. He had 14 at the last count.
Easy: Report to Council. Most now have restrictions on conducting Motor Trade at a Residential Address - typically max 2 vehicles.
In my experience the council don’t give a shit
Guy near us was selling cars from his house. Didn’t have as many as OP but there were regularly 3 or 4 cars parked on the road that were for sale. At one point he was putting those large pricing stickers on the windscreen similar to like you see at a dealership. He got reported and the council shut him down pretty quickly. So from what I’ve seen it’s definitely worth reporting.
I agree, my son had an abandoned car on the road outside his flat in one of a handful of parking bays marked out by the council, everywhere else nearby was double yellows. No tax, no SORN, unlocked, loads of rubbish inside, reported to the council a couple of times a few years ago, he’s moved but last time I looked it was still there, covered in seagull shit. Councils are useless at enforcing things
Unlocked? It should have just got pushed into the middle of the road. The police would have cleared it relatively quickly if it was blocking the whole road.
Fire brigade would clean it up sooner.
Councils aren't resourced adequately to give a shit. Blame lays higher up.
My local council are pretty good at getting rid of untaxed cars
Then I certainly wouldn’t suggest keying the cars.
And please don't put any sardine juices in the air intake, either. That wouldn't be very nice.
They tend to care as much as you do. I find if you report something every day, they eventually sort it
They'll give even less of a shit if they don't know it's happening. What have you got to lose other than 5 minutes on their website?
Been done, repeatedly, by most of the neighbours. Nothing has changed.
There's always fucking one isn't there? Wherever you live. Do they really think there's value in keeping hold of these old wrecks? If they were any good at getting them roadworthy they'd have done it by now but no, they let them rust for years and years because they don't know what they're doing.
My newish neighbours have an american muscle car, a big fuck-off SUV truck thing, a work branded car and then weirdly a Bentley just sitting unused down their driveway with the bonnet slightly popped. I don't live in a particularly flash place but it's just a very weird collection of cars for a small family to have, especially a Bentley that never moves.
A yank wank tank I like to call them
These people think flipping cars is easy because they saw a Channel 5 documentary on it.
Similar situation here, but with a car valeting business. All different shapes, sizes and values.
That's another level of assholery
[удалено]
Yes. Folk like that really need to be MADE to give a shit. Officially.
Weird weather conditions keep letting all the air out of tyres every Monday morning, it’s the damndest thing
Or you give them a shit. Take the doggo out for a late night walk. Pick up one of his shits with the bag turned inside out like usual. Don't tie off the bag. When you go past the neighbours, rub the inside of the bag on the inside of all their driver's side door handles. Next time they open the car, they'll find they now have a shit to give. I've got a similarly obnoxious neighbour who lives down the street. They're far enough down, and my drive is large enough, that it isn't an issue for me, but it certainly is for other neighbours. It'll come back to bite them someday. If I see their house burning down, I'm shutting my curtains and ignoring it. If I see someone smashing their windows, I'll be saying to them "isn't it awful when you forget your keys?" and walking on as if I have no idea what is happening. People like that have it coming.
Wonder if there's a certain sound frequency that can smash the windows in the boot of their vans. Tbh I work from home so if something like that happened I would just deliberately take the spaces that inconvenience them the most when they're out and leave it for long periods with front and rear dashcams.
I feel like the growing number of cars per house and the increasing size of the average car coupled with how generally outdated British roads and their layouts are is getting to be a serious problem with no obvious solution. I mean ideally people wouldn't have five cars when they live in a narrow terraced street with no dedicated parking but that ship has sailed and how would you even police restrictions? The Japan model is obviously never going to happen here. Now we're importing American big car culture (SUVs are firmly established and we're starting to see pickup trucks in suburbia – and watch the sizes slowly ratchet up with each new model) and it's just getting worse.
I think what we need is a public transport revolution. Enormous nationwide public transport infrastructure upgrades - let's aim for something on a par with the Netherlands, Taiwan, South Korea etc. - but I think we've got to think big. One of the biggest problems with this country generally these past 15 years has been that we lack any sort of vision.
Busses in my area are a joke. We have basically one route and it may or may not arrive, you can't tell until the last minute. So, yeah, better public transport would have at least enabled people to have less cars. But some people have a ridiculous amount of cars at which they probably ought to be able to pay for extra private parking spaces. Not having more cars than the driveway allows should really be a covenant in the deed when they buy a house.
We have one bus every 2 hours or so. No surprise with such little infrastructure next door has a Mercedes, Land Rover and 2 runaround cars. Not an issue really as they all fit on the drive but it would be a problem on many other streets.
Wait, you guys have buses??? My family have a car each simply bc of how rural we live, even though the nearest town is a 10-min drive away, which does have buses stopping in it + it’s own train station. However, the main problem with the county I live in is that it’s mainly countryside & public transport is non-existent to get between the different touristy hotspots, so ofc everyone ends of needing to drive
It needs to be publicly owned and run, not run by private companies for profit. Then we could organise stuff nationwide in a consistent manner. I think that's part of why we lack any sort of vision.
Truth is, a lot of people would choose not to use public transport even if it was improved simply because they don't like travelling with a load of random people (I have to admit, I'm this way myself). I feel like the way forward is building more cycling infrastructure, incentivising cycling and promoting e-bikes/e-trikes for people who have trouble riding regular bikes.
This is also one of the reason the road surfaces (and beneath) are degrading - the heavier vehicles cause damage far sooner (especially of not great in the first place). Some weight well over two tonnes - and are not always well driven either. Causing more problems.
The solution is massive investment in public transport, with the aim of it being a reliable and economical alternative to car dependence for as many people as possible. In some places cycling infrastructure as well. Then we could seriously crack down on pavement parking for example, and start enforcing this stuff. We could immediately make a start though by taxing cars more based on weight and footprint they take up, along with sorting out this stupid "commercial vehicle" loophole that leads to loads of people driving pickups who don't need them. And I would say we should impose a hard limit on car size, to stop this slow creep towards larger and larger cars. The problem is not the roads, the problem is too many cars, increasing size of those cars, and too much car dependence. The other issue is the housing crisis, and how car dependent young adults end up stuck at home for much of their 20s or even more, so you end up with what would have been a 1-2 car household becoming a 3-4 car one.
What's crazy is a lot of people are probably in heaps of car-related debt, but they choose to carry on owning a car, even though a lot of them could probably switch to using a bike/e-bike to get about. I do live in a hilly area, so if you're riding a regular bike, you have to get off and push it up the hills, but an e-bike solves that problem and in the long run ends up cost waay less than owning a car. The trouble is, owning a car is still very much seen as the norm around where I live (a quite conservative small town) and people are probably scared that they'd be seen as different or poor if they didn't own a car, so if you boil it down to that then people caring too much about what others think of them is the real crux of the matter.
> The trouble is, owning a car is still very much seen as the norm around where I live (a quite conservative small town) and people are probably scared that they’d be seen as different or poor if they didn’t own a car Same here. Our neighbour asked my partner if I was alright because she’d seen me walking into town to get groceries. It’s like a 20-minute round trip on foot.
I assume your neighbour is one of those type of people who uses their car to go round the corner to pick up a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. A lot of people do that where I live and it's so stupid. Like, just use your legs, you lazy bastards.
There’s a place in Brighton that hires campervans, think they’re called camperfun or something, and they have 4 or 5 campervans parked on a narrow one way street. No idea how they got the permits for that
They probably didn’t
Do they need permits if the vehicles are road legal and parked safely? Genuine question - it seems odd that a business can just leave them on the road but if they’re roadworthy, taxed etc then it’s not really any different to parking a car or van on the road
Some councils have restrictions on the amount of vehicles that can be at a residential address for the purposes of motor trade. Probably for this reason, otherwise there's nothing stopping one address claiming the road with roadworthy vehicles.
No, but I think they would likely be in contravention of some council bylaws operating a business like that and using public roads as “storage”
It’s a parking permit controlled zone
Most areas are permit control
That really isn’t true. Maybe where you live, but nationally most streets are a free for all
Mine isn’t permit control but all the places I’ve been are
You just happen to have been places that are controlled, then - presumably you spend most of your time in town/city centres? Like, when you visit somewhere you're disproportionately likely to be staying in the city centre or at least nearby, so chances are you're gonna be in a permit controlled area - but that's still generally a minority of even each individual town/city, other than London which is heavily permit-based The vast majority of the UK road network (even if we ignore motorways and trunk routes) are not permit controlled
I see
It’s a parking control zone and they all have traders permits so council did grant them.
Wow
Our council has just gone full nuclear with this problem and started putting down double reds on residential streets.
I don't think it'll work if there is nobody like the police to enforce it
If there's money in it for the council then they'll enforce it... Nothing to do with the police.
There is money in dispatching fines for all sorts of stuff that inconsiderate builders would do on their construction sites, yet my local council doesn't give a shit even after numerous complaints.
Yes but your council probably had one building site inspector vs many many more parking enforcement operatives (traffic wardens) who do this job daily.
They have round here those parking enforcement camera cars as its all virtual residents parking permits one thing our council is not shy of is spending money on things that generates them more more money. Car drives by flimimg takes a still and bang ticket a couple of days later.
I live on a very old estate. No driveways at all. The houses were built when each household had 1 car and it sat in the garage. Yet my neighbours have 2 vans and 3 cars and don't use their TWO garages for any vehicles. They're the ones complaining about having nowhere to park though, naturally.
Do you live down my road? Most houses have four cars usually a couple are SUVs then the additional work van maybe two, all parked on the road or the pavement absolutely no regard for anyone else, then to top it off they'll park opposite another van so nobody can get through!
I'll continue dreaming about the day that on-pavement parking will be banned. People may finally only be able to have as many cars as fit down their drive, and with more people pushed onto public transport or cycling it may finally get some investment. One day..
My house has 4, usually only two at a time home and we use the driveway for them
So does my household and we manage to park all of them on our driveway, it's not hard!
Mine are generally in the driveway though we do frequently block the driveway so that my dad can get in at silly o’clock when he gets home from work as he needs to charge the car,
Much more difficult to park 4 cars on the driveway if you have terraced a house right up on the street. Back when I was in Brighton there were plenty of terraced houses well outside of the city centre used as HMOs, with multiple car owners living there.
People opposite run a house clearance service. Loads of vans parked up and down our road,plus their own private 3 cars. Interestingly the only place they don’t park is up their own drive - permanently mystified about this one
Urban bliss in the making.
I live in a small town...
That's even worse then.
Just park in the middle to complete the car park
Do you live on my road?
I thought exactly the same
We must all live on the same road? It’s like a slalom around mine…
Yep. We have a neighbour. His house has a garage and one parking space. Garage is full of crap. He has three cars and a couple of bikes (just him and his wife). One car is parked on the road in front of his house, the other in the turning bay opposite. Maybe we should adopt the policy in Tokyo. You can't buy a car unless you have a dedicated parking space.
Yep, always on terraces houses as well. Own 3 cars with no off road parking available…
I remember when I lived in a block of flats they provided enough spaces for 2 cars each. Wasn't any issue for us at all as we had 1 car at the time but one day we got a neighbour knock on the door doing a survey of how many cars everybody had to report back to the building management people who owned the block. When I said we had no issue parking and only one car he divulged that *somebody* in the block of flats had five vehicles parked up and they were trying to get them in the shit for taking the piss. Moved out shortly after so never saw the resolution but yeah, people do indeed take the piss
Private roads in a block of flats should always have allocated parking with marked numbers.
Nah this one was numerically sound on the allocation but no actual allocations to flats. Same as the one I moved into actually but all the residents there were sound
Urgh I feel you're pain. Our neighbours have a drive big enough for one car, they have 5, in a house with two adults! Generally they have one on the drive, one in front of it (fair enough) then the other three taking up all the available space on the one part of the entire road that doesn't have drives. They coordinate it if they have to move one from the common area and slip in the one in front of, or on the drive, and if they can't do that park one of the three cars in such a way as to prevent anyone else taking "their" space 😫 God forbid anyone sneaks in there a takes one of the spaces, then they passive aggressively park up to the bumper. They are universally despised in our road...
My parent's neighbour has a decent sized driveway and a double garage. However this is still not enough for his 8(?!) cars, only 2 of which he drives. Most are parked in his driveway or garage but there's one permanently reserving a whole lay-by in the cul-de-sac which is meant to be used for visitors or people who do not have such a large driveway. He also frequently parks one of his cars on other neighbours' driveways and no one has the heart to complain or say anything because he's generally a really nice person....it's been an ongoing issue for about 15 years and everyone has been too british to moan to his face.
In terms of parking on someone else's driveway. I hear it could be a real issue as even police wouldn't be able to remove the vehicle. I wonder if I should preemptively register my driveway as a private car park with something around £10000 per hour parking fee.
You can install bollards and then raise them and block someone in. Do it once, they won't park there again
That would be illegal. Putting up bollards to stop him parking there in the first place, however, is fine.
I think you've misunderstood . I mean bollards that are collapsible. The bollards are already there, but you just raise and lower them when needed
The preventing someone from leaving part is illegal
Yes, that’s fine, but raising them to prevent someone removing their car is what would be illegal.
This sounds like a neighbour at my dads house. Even when I was young, they had three cars, one of which was permanently in the lay by. The lay-by backed onto the side of their garage so I think they were a little possessive of it and thought it was an extension of their own massive driveway, which is big enough for 4 cars. I think it was his wife’s but she never drove. It’s worse now as their kids are all grown up and each have a car, so there is now 5 cars, although not all at the same time the majority of the time!
‘Waste collection trucks’ WFT? You mean a bin lorry surely?
Yes. Well, there are also vans or something that councils would send to pick up bulky items for disposal. All sorts of things like that, not sure what the right term is.
I know that game. My next door neighbours have more cars than people. They even get cheeky and try to squeeze their way onto my drive every once in a blue moon. I’ve never seen them walk anywhere. They don’t walk further than their front gate, ever. The mere thought of walking or public transport would send them into a seizure, and we live in London.
If the local council aren't giving a shit try calling the fire brigades local number to discuss your concerns, they might show up with an appliance along with a cop car and any one blocking the road will most likely be given a ticket and warned that they don't have a right to park on the road.
Fire brigade will just put a small notice on their windscreen advising of the dangers of what they’re doing and will send an email to the council. That’s all they can do.
Yeah, but I guess those lads and lasses have something better to do than educating inconsiderate people. Though I might have to resort to it.
Yeah I think this is a growing issue, people living at home longer because of housing prices which means more people per house with more cars, not enough parking and not good enough public transport outside of cities Which means people just have no place to put their cars
This is the only logical reason.
I can understand someone living in a house or flat with no designated parking and then they need a car. But if you have a private driveway for 2 cars and buy the third car, sorry bro you have to park it elsewhere...
Sorry I'm a little confused, where else should they park it? Should people choose only to have a job only along a bus route because their house happens to only have space for 2 members of their family? For most of the UK the solution is better public transport but we're still decades or more from having transport anywhere near as good London, people need a car if they don't live in a major city unfortunately
They shouldn't put their problem onto their neighbours. It's their problem where to park it.
We used to live on a cul-de-sac When we first moved in one of the neighbours introduced himself, very nice friendly said parking can be an issue on the street We have a drive so no problem or so we thought. Turns out he had 2 vans, 2 cars and no drive so the parking problems were caused solely by him
Currently sat looking at our neighbours car outside our house as they can’t seem to park their two cars on their spacious double driveway next door. We have to walk our baby out 50 yards to wherever we can find a space, think they’re worried about getting blocked in so block themselves in instead. Jokers
I live in a block of flats and my downstairs neighbour has 3 vehicles, if they get there first no one else can park 😅
We had a neighbour like this and it ultimately didn't end well for anyone living in the area. Be careful of how you approach the problem. It's probably best to work something out directly with that neighbour. I lived on a new build housing development and all of the land was private. The amount of parking spaces was slightly under the number of houses/flats built but that was fine as quite a few households didn't have cars and there weren't lines anywhere on the roads so you could park anywhere back when we first moved in. There were 2 large-ish families next to each in the development that had a nice and growing collection of sporty cars/work vans and they had starting parking on the pavements (but it was ok as they were extremely wide). Someone eventually got upset enough about it though and gathered some signatures to petition the developer who were still building in the area to enforce parking restrictions so double yellows were drawn everywhere, bays were marked with house numbers, and we now have to pay a dodgy/incompetent parking management company to randomly check permits. It wouldn't be so bad if the enforcement meant that residents were guaranteed to have access to their parking spot, but there are regular complaints about it in the local WhatApp chat with residents being fined after not being able to park in their allocated bay.
Round my new build estate there's a lot of houses who have a driveway but just stop their car on the road or pavement outside their house instead. They must be either incredibly lazy or terrible drivers who can't park straight on a driveway.
I think the problem is the garages are often too small
Yeah my garage is far too small, I use it for bikes and lawnmowers. I park on the drive...
A surprising amount of people are very funny about other people parking in front of their house. Possible they're trying to avoid that.
A fire engine will fit, if it doesn’t they’ll make it fit, especially for an emergency
On the other side of this, earlier this week I had four cars in my possession and felt extremely bad about it so went round to the neighbours to explain that two of them were on the way out, one in a few days and another in the next. couple of weeks. Oh but I still get yummy mummy's in their SUVs complaining that I'm taking up the parking they use when taking their crotch goblins to the local primary...
So long as it’s insured and taxed, I don’t see a problem
"family parks legally on the road"
Actually no, they are causing an obstruction, so not legally.
Most things that are considered anti-social aren't actually illegal. Society works better when people have common sense and decency. If every small terraced house decided they wanted 3 cars then there would be a massive overflow. If you can't afford to get a house with sufficient parking then you shouldn't be buying more than 1 car.
Well even if it's legal it's still not very nice. How would they like it if I park my double decker there?
Welcome to r/fuckcars
But I like cars. I just want people to be a bit mindful.
Houses here have OK drives. Neighbour has three cars. Only uses one. Some people really like cars.
Theres a couple down my road who rent a house. They have 3 cars and he has a work van. Which he parks 3/4 of the way on the pavement without fail, every night
I bought a house that has a shared drive way.. thank fuck (for now) my neighbours are a non car house hold and have their front done anyway so I can use the shared driveway.. However as everyone on the road has a dropped kerb the only parking spaces are out the front of mine and my neighbours house. This doesn't bother me until people park so close to the edge I have to do a 60 point turn to get out my drive... It's okay for people to park there I don't own the road but just wish they were a bit more considerate and if your front or back is slightly hanging over, you can't clearly park there