Share your tales of parking madness

Can I get in first with the no such thing as road tax comment !!!

I wrote that especially for you. 😆

In a slightly different vein the Father in Law was once featured in an article on the Top Ten Worst Parkers in Manchester in the MEN once. It was obviously a picture that someone had submitted of his car parked on the Metrolink tramlines in the city centre. Queue lots of comments from people saying they hoped his car was run into and smashed etc. What the person had failed to take into account was the barriers that had been put up (you could even see them in the distance) as the line was closed for repairs, hence why he was parked there whilst working on it.

Our next door neighbour also gets a bit funny about parking. He’s generally a pretty nice chap but my god he’s nosy. I once mentioned that I was looking at bigger cars to replace my Fiesta and he started panicking asking where I would park it, and did I really need a car any bigger. His face when I then bought a van AND kept my Fiesta was priceless. Its worth mentioning at this point that our drive is long enough for 4 cars at a push so its not as though it would be parked in front of his house or anything.

He also once reported a car to the police as abandoned when someone had the cheek to park it outside his house for 18hrs!

I fell for that hook line and sinker!

Where I used to live, a grumpy git used to put really sticky signs on your window (left loads of residue) if you parked on “his” road.
Every day he used to pull his car out of the garage, not drive anywhere and just park it outside his house then put it back in the garage at the end of the day. One day he went on his holidays, the car stayed in the garage and he got burgled. Stupid stupid stupid.

Friends of mine kept 2 motorbikes in their house and just rolled them in and out along the front path… But if anyone parked in front of the path, there wasn’t really space to get them out. So they left a wreck in the road outside to prevent that. Makes sense to me, if it wasn’t for the motorbikes they’d probably have had cars anyway.

I’m kind of blocked in just now, if that car’s still there when I leave the office I think I’ll ram it. You’ve got to be pretty brave to park that close to a car as covered in scratches and dents as mine is tbh

My house is opposite a very popular chip shop and gets very busy between 5 and 9pm and, more often than not, people park across our drive as they are ‘only going to be a minute’ which, when it’s busy isn’t the case.
As I spend a lot of time in the garden I’d noticed a serial offender in a posh big X5. I’d asked him a few times to not park across our drive as, at the time, we had a poorly baby and might have needed to get out quickly. He was very offish and just told me he’d park where he likes so, one day when he’d parked across the drive again I got a couple of mates from around the corner to come and park either side of him, within about 2 inches room front and back. Imagine his surprise when he came out of the chip shop to find his car very, very blocked in.
He knocked on the door to ask if I knew who the 2 cars were. “Yes I do” said I.”Could you get them moved?” he asked. “Sorry, the owners have just popped out, they’ll only be a minute” I replied…25mins later my mates came back to move the cars. He’s never parked there since but gives me death stares…ooh, scary!!

Liverpool council, before decriminalising traffic parking laws, the city centre was patroled by yellow hated trafic wardens employed by the police, and ok they where, and council traffic wardens that looked after pay to park bays on the streets,

So for a week working at a charity fitting it out, i parked on double yellow lines, after explaining to the traffic warden yellow hat ,what i was there for and he said leave a note with my badge number on and ill tell the office.

Final day,couldnt get fully on yellow lines so parked partly on the pay to park bay , same road just a white line box, walked out 15 mins later and had a parking ticket from the council traafic enforcement officer, he said i was doing the council out of funds by parking in the bay,thats why i got the ticket,i appealed and got no sence i had deprived the council of a parking fee it appears.

Visiting a freinds mum with him, neighbour threw bread all over car, so the birds would peck at roof and bonnet, he did it once to often someone threw a bread bag with a brick in threw his front window when he was out.

Worked at a elderly customers house old terraced street, street empty till about 17.30, then started filling up ,started loading tools into van, woman parked right behind me, she refused tomobve back a bit so i moved forward to get tools in, went back in house and had a cuppa with elderley couple, 5 mins latter, horn going outside, then a loud banging at door, it was this demented woman demanding i move my van as i was 2 foot into her personal parking space, and that her dad, boyfreind and police where on the way to teach me a lesson.They never did arive.

Years ago I lived in Wells in Somerset .We have a night time carnival circuit and roads for miles around get blocked for hours .I hope the sod who parked across my drive for hours one year had a foot pump in the boot !

We live in a little pretty village in the south downs directly opposite the primary school and next door but one to the church. In the week we had mums constantly parking across our drive for the drop off/pick up and at the weekend the red sock brigade and the christians did much the same.

That was until a couple of moths ago when the hideous fat woman who parked across our drive every morning disgorged her kids from her fatmobile directly into the path of a car going past. They are pretty chubby too so bounced off reasonably well – just a broken arm and broken collar bone. Apparently she wobbled into the head’s office demanding what was going to do about the ‘nightmare’ in front of the school. To paraphrase, the head told her that it was lazy people like her that were effectively the problem and within 7 days the road 50yds either side of our house was slavered in yellow school no parking paint and the chubsters have to park in a nice safe spot down the road and actually walk the rest of the way. Happy days ! (apart from the broken bones bit obvs!).

Fulking hell. (Don’t think there’s a school in Fulking though but I was very proud of the pun)

This thread is really funny and depressing all at once, axe murdering parked cars and running over the caretaker being highlights.

I have gotten pretty snotty when people have parked across the backyard when I used to keep my car there (or when they parked so close to back gate I couldn’t get my bin out on bin day. But front street has always been a FFA and I couldn’t give a monkeys, I refuse to get drawn in, really can’t understand people who do.

One thing is for sure, next time I’m house hunting I’ll be chatting to a neighbour or two to find out if they have “parking wars”.

The nursery our littlest used to go to had to repeatedly send out letters asking for parents to park considerately, last one had a quite specific list of dos and don’ts including:
don’t park behind people who are trying to reverse out of their space (this happened to my mrs, she didn’t report it so presumably it’s a regular occurrence)
Take care driving across the pavement outside (lots of local school kids use it)
Don’t block the entrance/exit

WTF do people need this shit pointing out to them – repeatedly?

oh and my current bugbear is people double parking while waiting to pick up a mate when there is a parking spot or side road a couple of meters away. No it’s ok I’ll just sit here blocking the road instead.

As an aggressive teenager, someone took offence to me parking in “their” spot. they parked so that their car was touching my bumper, presumably so I’d have to knock on the door and get a blocking. The thing is, mk2 fiestas had steel bumpers, so I just shunted the crappy astra backwards and drove off with mr angry stood in the road waving his fist. With hindsight I could have been done for leaving the scene of an accident, but it was the 90s, I was probably stoned and it just seemed very clever at the time.

i shouldn’t but LOL @ Covert, i like that story.

I have issues with people parking over my drive often when i’m arriving home late from work, so in good spirit i park millimeters close to their bumper. That’s nothing though, my next door neighbour’s drive is constantly used as a communal parking space!!

Fulking hell.

Fulking Hill, earlier;

(hopefully Finn won’t mind me linking his pic from here;

http://www.finnhopson.com/recent/h3AC34DF0#h3ac34df0
)

I’ve every sympathy with people who use their drive and get blocked in or out of it by nobbers.

been blocked almost daily for months.
not suer if they do it on purpose to specifically p155 off residents, or just to avoid paying for a parking permit that will let them park anywhere around town with no hassles. mixed use building, residential, offices and shops, and it’s the shop staff (mostly, but occasionally customers) that do the blocking. surely it must p155 them of too when 10 people come home from work at 6pm and they have to move the car 10 times?

edit: and it’s me that has to park illegally or block another entrance to go in the shop to get them to move their car. again.

people are strange.

saying that, the last 2 weeks has been totally clear. maybe someone “has had a word” ?

was just at the stage of printing myself a load of “www.iparklikeaxxxx.com” (xxxx = see you next tuesday), and “can I have a parking ticket plaese” stickers, to stick on the cars daily.

I’ve every sympathy with people who use their drive and get blocked in or out of it by nobbers.

Serves the bourgeois scum right for stealing the land from the oppressed masses 😉

Oh how the other half live

PS neighbour often gets blocked in and it amuses me no end 😈

We have an issue of parents parking at our school as well – the school has no pavement, so the gate opens directly onto a (one way) road.
Parents regularly park on the zig-zags, double yellows etc, blocking the view of cars incoming (especially if you are 4′ tall and cannot see past the hulking people carrier or 4×4).

This was being discussed at the parent teacher council, with the police being brought in, more signage and a pupil campaign to take pictures of the offending cars.

Cue one of the parent council suddenly speaking up and asking what was she meant to do, I mean, she had to drop one 9 year old off AND could have a sleeping baby… Will none of us think about the sleeping child being left in a car?

She was not impressed when I pointed out our 9 year old walks a mile to school each day by himself, so her 9 year old was more than capable of the 100m walk from the local car park to school….

*sigh*

at my kids school its a one way street They still try to drive down it on th emornign to get about 75 metres closer. its carnage and rarely clears before 9:15.
Numerous kids are late due to this and the parents blame the roads

People are very lazy arent they

She was not impressed when I pointed out our 9 year old walks a mile to school each day by himself, so her 9 year old was more than capable of the 100m walk from the local car park to school….

How could you leave a 9 year old child unattended for 100 metres? Don’t you know there are pedos lurking around every corner these days?

(Sadly I think this ridiculous media-fuelled paranoid mentality is actually a big factor in kids being driven absolutely everywhere 🙁 )

haha

mine’s a one way street too. impressive how many try to be clever and drive 50m the wrong way just to save driving round 3 sides of a 100m x 100m block.

and the best bit…

when I’ve essentially blocked them (cars parked both sides), apparently from their gesticulations, it’s *MY* fault for not moving all the way across into a spare parallel parking bay to let them past. Next time I get out and use words, since here in Germany, the use of 5 knuckle shuffle gesticulations when driving can mean a visit from the Polizei.

lazy f*****s

Did people fight over where to tie their horses?

(Sadly I think this ridiculous media-fuelled paranoid mentality is actually a big factor in kids being driven absolutely everywhere )

I agree.
Let us leave aside the fact that you are more likely to have a car accident than be murdered, eh? Or the most dangerous place (from a harm point of view)for a child in Britain in 2011 was in their own home…and the safest was in local park, unsupervised!

Years ago I used to go once a week to a kebab shop which had a particularly small, awkward car park and really, nowhere else nearby. I had a big old truck at the time but I always made a point of parking properly.

One evening I arrived there and the last space was quite badly encroached upon by a clio, someoene clearly couldn’t be arsed to park in the bay correctly. So I very carefully reversed my Hilux into the adjacent bay, taking care to stay inside the parking space. Went in and placed my order. After a few minutes the fat Belfast hood who was also in the kebab shop left and I watched with great amusement as he walked over to his car slowly realising he would have to climb in through the passenger door.

He stood there for a second before storming back to the kebab shop and asking who owned the “jeep”.
I asked if there was a problem to which he replied
“Well look at the way you’re f***in parked mate! I can’t go nowhere”.
I pointed out to him that I was in the parking space, he wasn’t.
“How am I supposed to get in my car?” ….
should have maybe thought of that while you were parking, would you like me to move?
“No mate, go **** yourself. You’re a dick. A total ****in dick.
Oh how I laughed in his face and nearly wet myself watching his fat ass wriggle into the driver seat of his car. Took him about 5 minutes.

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/68662_o.gif

Is that St James’s in the background?

A neighbour has a parking space next to mine. However, the space next to his is unused, so he parks in the middle of these two parking spaces. One bloody cold winter’s day, with 2-3 inches of snow on the ground I was out fixing the heater on my Landy. I *really* didn’t want to be, but needs must.

He came out, and saw that the toes of one of my feet was over the line in *his* parking space as I laid out on my back under the car. He never said a word and I forgot about it till the next day when he had decided to teach me a lesson and stop me putting my foot in his space by parking his car as close as possible to the line as he could without being in my space. This was an idea full of fail because he parked with the driver’s side next to me. I simply parked my car somewhat nearish the line and then took the tram to work for a few days. I came home one day to find that he must have climbed over from the passenger side to move his car back to the middle of the 2 spaces.

On the other side I had a nice couple in their mid 80’s. One day I came home to find that they had parked in my space by accident ( the bays are numbered ). I wasn’t going to worry about it, so parked in the one part of the car park that definitely wasn’t anyone else’s space and wasn’t in the way of anyone – the next morning I found the soggy remains of a nasty note on my windscreen for parking outside of a bay.

Very recently in Bower rd,Bristol I parked on the road nicely settled between two driveways outside a pair of semi detached houses. Now I was quoting a job in an adjacent school but the owners of said houses assumed I was another typical builder (scaffolder) parking to use the café nearby. They had parked cars either side of me to within an inch.
My caddy was pretty strong when it came to “easing the restriction” 😆
Dunno what they thought the outcome would be..

I actually had that the other day from a chap who I’d asked not to park on the pavement. I went and checked the windscreen and pointed out he didn’t have pavement tax.

I live up the road from a Church. Parking is non existent, compounded by double yellows having been put in a wee while back (apparently, it’s a bone of contention). During the summer i was off work and pottering about at home when it became apparent there was a bloke putting his car in the end of my long driveway and making to head to the Church. As I was going out I managed to intercept him and he said “I’m really late and there seemed to be space” – w.t.f. So he had parked in a driveway because he was late. I pointed out that really that wasn’t going to happen.

What you need is a few teenage kids coming of driving age, they’ll soon hack your neighbours off, do you want to borrow two?

There’s a school sports field over the road from me that they share with the local kids football club. This means that on Saturday mornings, the on road spaces all get used up by parents watching their kids at training. That’s OK, it’s a FFA road and they’re as entitled to the spaces as I am.

A few weeks ago, I got back from my Sat morning ride to find all the space taken. Wanting to offload the bike into the garage I just parked across my driveway, blocking my wife in temporarily. Some bloke sat in a nearby car (it was a cold drizzly day and presumably he couldn’t be bothered to watch his kids, prefering to read the paper in his car) disembarked with the speed of a US soldier leaving a landing craft on Omaha beach and charged to wards me shouting OY! OY! at me. Before informing me in ‘aggressive’ terms that I couldn’t park there as it was blocking a driveway. I think he was mildly embarrassed as i thanked him profusely for his concern before going into my house.

In fairness, as with many others above there have been plenty of times where parents do just abandon cars without giving a toss about who they inconvenience, and we have had cause in the past to mention it to the football club, who I know have passed it on in parents newsletters. I know this because a mate is the club secretary so mentioning it to the club means mentioning it to him. So I’m sure this parent was protecting the image of the club, in his eyes. But a less mild mannered individual than me might well have seen the need to bop him in the nose at the second or third OY!

damn. spoke too soon.

Shop staff blocking the legal parking space next to my entrance, with a car parked in it (probably one of their customers illegally parking in one of the office parking bays).

One of those fat Minis (bit like its owner I expect – obese), parked mostly across my entrance. I could just squeeze between obese Mini and bike rack bollard to get in, but would have to tell* them to move it to get out, since it’s a one-way street.

Oh and yes, funnily enough there was a Black BMW that thought it would be fine to take a short cut. Someone else blocked him in 🙂

* I’ve gone well past the point of asking. If it’s blocking my entrance, I go to the door and shout “Move that Mini/BMW/Audi!” an point (then usually do a w****er symbol for good luck every time I walk past their shop window).

jimjam and cranberry, that’s very childish. And a great game! Double points if you can get 2 cars, one either side. It’s one of the many benefits of having a van with decent mirrors for reversing and back doors you can get in and out. 😀

Terraced street in chester, builder had left a set of ladders to keep a space for roofer to put ladders from roadway against wall to access roof,woman driver reversed over ladders as we watched, wheels each side of the ladders.

Hmmm. Seems to be quite a few school, church, shops stories here.
We live opposite a church, with a row of several takeaways about 50m away (wahoo) on a pedestrian bit set back from the street, with a primary school just up the road, also about 50m away.

It gets pretty chaotic here at times, but doesn’t really affect us as we both work. The school run parents are the worst offenders. Apparently letters were sent out but it all got a bit aggressive and a teacher was threatened with violence for asking someone to park more considerately….

Wonder if you could get away with an old double decker or double wheel base Luton right outside the windows (terrace row) blocking out the sun 😆

Once parked in a space up Falkirk town centre, some nosey gimp came up and told me off for parking in a disabled space. Pointed out that it was actually a loading bay and was also a Sunday so the parking was a free for all.

it all got a bit aggressive and a teacher was threatened with violence for asking someone to park more considerately….

I really hope that was reported to the police and the book was duly thrown at the parent.

All these people who are getting their drives parked in front of, are these gravelled over front garden setups where there MAY be some confusion or proper drives with dropped kerbs, little Posts and a garage at the end of it.

I cannot fathom parking across a drive. It does not compute. Road outside a house fair game but across a drive?? It’s a drive! What’s going through people’s heads when they park over a drive?

tthew

jimjam and cranberry, that’s very childish. And a great game! Double points if you can get 2 cars, one either side. It’s one of the many benefits of having a van with decent mirrors for reversing and back doors you can get in and out.

Not big or clever, but bloody good craic 😀