In particular, do you drive across the pavement and grass verge so you can park your Chelsea tractor in your front garden but are too cheap to pay the council for a dropped kerb? Then don't.
All the verges along the main road into town have been destroyed by people driving across them or parking on them, and the pavement is now covered in an inch of shite dumped their by their wheels.
The cost of repairs is probably going to be in excess of 50k, so if you're whining about the library closing down you only have yourselves to blame.
Oh, and a personal attack on the apathetic layabouts at the council who show no interest in either prosecuting or suing the lazy ***** who did this, despite the fact that their cars are parked in front of their house complete with muddy wheels and tyre tracks.
The cost of prosecuting would probably be a couple more libraries.
Bollards is the answer. Preferably in the middle of the night so the 4x4s are left high and dry.
Edit: And WTF is going on with the litter situation / fly-tipping in the South East? The A41 is basically one giant stream of abandoned building waste, and today I walked into town to find two gas boilers dumped on the pavement.
How thick do you have to be to (a) fly tip something that has scrap value and (b) not realise that the owner is fairly easily identifiable by calling the manufacturer and asking who the warranty was registered to?
How thick do you have to be to not realise that the owner is fairly easily identifiable by calling the manufacturer and asking who the warranty was registered to?
I refer you to the last paragraph of your previous rantette 🙂
Parking your car in your lawn....
How to make your house worth 50k less.
Nearly as bad as a banger racer on bricks or a mouldy green caravan.
We topsoiled a load of verges on the job I'm on before Christmas, looked sweet. Came back after to 4 inch deep tracks across every one. Residents complaining saying they should have been tarmacced and asking when they will be tidied up.
My answer was 🙄
Do you drive on pavements?
If you don't own a posh car, like the knob in the Range Rover Sport who was parked half on the pavement we use to walk to school, next to a nice wide empty road with plenty of space for parking, then probably not. Those people in normal cars all seem to manage to park on the road, it's always the ****s in expensive 4x4s who are incapable of doing so.
Whilst I realise there are probably more important things going on in the world, this does bring out the victor meldrew in me. I can't understand why people dont have some more pride in where they live, and some respect for their neighbours. Luckily there's only one or two who do it around our way but it does make the place look a right mess.
Do you drive on pavements?If you don't own a posh car, like the knob in the Range Rover Sport who was parked half on the pavement we use to walk to school, next to a nice wide empty road with plenty of space for parking, then probably not. Those people in normal cars all seem to manage to park on the road, it's always the **** in expensive 4x4s who are incapable of doing so.
Seeing as we're ranting...
This really pisses me off when I think about it. It's not just 4x4s. The pavement's there for people to walk on. There's a nice wide road for your car. It's not necessary to park half on the pavement just so other peopl have to turn their electrically assisted steering wheel half a degree less to get round you. On my typical suburban estate with bags of road space and little parking other than on drives, I've seen elderly people with zimmer frames have to step into the road and walk round cars parked on the kerb for no apparent reason.
pet hate... folk who drive past a passing place and expect you to stick your car in the ditch or reverse half a mile so they can get past just because you have a 4x4.....
most of them when you dont move into the ditch will stick their audi into the ditch trying to pass you rather than reverse 10ft......
I don't get why people park on the pavement when the road is plenty wide enough not to? especially when they don't allow room for pedestrian's/buggy's/etc, if you're parked on a kerb and my kid accidentally dents your car with his scooter handle then it's your fault.
There's a blke up the road with a Merc and a bit of wood by the kerb so he can park it on his garden (it's not a drive till there's a drop kerb), save some money by not being hung up on your status car and pay for it to be done properly!!
I'm from the country so don't get me started on these a**holes who can't reverse for toffee and don't pull in as they might scratch the paint on their precious motor (which let's face it is all on PCP, they'll never own it and they only put £1k down).
And while I'm ranting ...... FOG LIGHTS!!!! turn the f***ing things off unless visibility is under 100 yards. They're not daytime running lights, there's a difference, you may find a clue in the name.
Oh and in answer to the original question - no, I don't drive on grass verges.
Yes I find it bizarre, who wants the front of their house to look like so bad? I live in a nice Surrey village, some of my neighbours mow their own verges, some leave it to the council to do each month, and some trash there's by driving all over it when its wet. Saw one car at the weekend parked completely off the road on a verge, makes the area look so unappealing.
Some did try putting plastic bollards in their verges, as we have a school near us and the Mums cause damage, all the bollards are trashed now. Maybe spikes are the answer.
I had to ask two neighbours to not park on MY grass! I was worried I was being unreasonably grumpy and precious but this thread has made me feel better 🙂
There would be pitchforks and torches if anyone transgressed the verges round our way
As an aside the fella up the road has a double garage and a nice driveway and has built a parking bay for his 4x4 in his garden right by the gates so it's screened from the house and road behind some trees/shrubs. House looks really good without a car stuck in front of it
I often park my T5 on the grass outside my house so my wife can get her 4x4 on the drive. At his time of the year it gets muddy. In the summer the grass grows back.
I've seen elderly people with zimmer frames have to step into the road and walk round cars
It might be quite fun trying to drag a zimmer frame through a narrow gap - they've got some sharp corners on them.
I often park my T5 on the grass outside my house
Is it your grass?
Had a good one of those. So I can reverse a Landy towing a trailer with a 7T digger on it 200 yards up a hill round a blind bend, or you can reverse your car 10 yards into a passing place the size of a supermarket car park. A tough choice made easier when the large Yorkshireman I was with suggested a third alternative involving rectal insertion 🙂pet hate... folk who drive past a passing place and expect you to stick your car in the ditch or reverse half a mile so they can get past just because you have a 4x4.....
There are certain areas in the UK that parking on a grass verge seems more common.
I try not to go to those places.
Scumbag city normally
Nope. - I assume it's owned by the same people that own the road.
It's fairly sobering that places with untidy grass verges are "scumbag city" when the area actually has grass verges in the first place.
As for reducing house prices by £50k, if I did that to mine I'd be giving it away for free.
All relative, innit.
We have on road parking where we live. Its fine, plenty of room to pass both ways.
There is one plum who insists on parking with their wheels on one side well on the pavement. WHY?
Nope. - I assume it's owned by the same people that own the road.
Hrrmph. I bet you drop banana skins too and hang dog do off fences.
I dont really eat bananas outside. - Always find they go mushy when carried. Tend to flick the dog crap under under the nearest hedge rather than pick it up.
[quote=trail_rat ]pet hate... folk who drive past a passing place and expect you to stick your car in the ditch or reverse half a mile so they can get past just because you have a 4x4.....
most of them when you dont move into the ditch will stick their audi into the ditch trying to pass you rather than reverse 10ft......
IME it seems to be the folks in 4x4s who are the worst at that (and I've also met some of those incapable of driving on a bit of grass to pass when the passing space is 10ft behind them!) I did have a good one a while ago - I think I've mentioned it on here before. In town rather than the country, parking on the other side of the road, so the car coming the other way was on my side, I'd already passed the last gap behind me when the car coming the other way drove past the gap in front of me. Presumably they expected me to reverse. I didn't - stopped the car, got out and walked up to them to tell them they needed to reverse as I wasn't. They did eventually, though they weren't very happy.
ad a good one of those. So I can reverse a Landy towing a trailer with a 7T digger on it 200 yards up a hill round a blind bend, or you can reverse your car 10 yards into a passing place the size of a supermarket car park. A tough choice made easier when the large Yorkshireman I was with suggested a third alternative involving rectal insertion
I did have a good one a while ago - I think I've mentioned it on here before. In town rather than the country, parking on the other side of the road, so the car coming the other way was on my side, I'd already passed the last gap behind me when the car coming the other way drove past the gap in front of me. Presumably they expected me to reverse. I didn't - stopped the car, got out and walked up to them to tell them they needed to reverse as I wasn't. They did eventually, though they weren't very happy.
This is a good time to have a mechanical issue with your starter motor, necessitating opening the bonnet and shaking your head a lot. And which mysteriously fixes itself after they've reversed. Or just get a book out.
I was sorely tempted to purchase some rock, big heavy rocks, and put them on the grass near the kerb to prevent people reversing over the grass there. Only the knowledge that some thieving sod would pinch them has stopped me so far.
pet hate... folk who drive past a passing place and expect you to stick your car in the ditch or reverse half a mile so they can get past just because you have a 4x4.....
More common round ere is people not wanting to dirty their Discovery or 'Trophy Defender' (owned by a lot of posh people for no discernible reason round here.. they aren't farmers .. they don't tow anything .. I'm not sure why you'd put yourself through it without good reason) and thinking a Pug 205 with Ditchfinder General tyres is as capable off road as their vehicle.
It's all about manners really.
do ditch finder not have reverse?
i will go on the verge or in the ditch if theres good reason but when you have blatently passed a passing place 10ft ago adn the last one i passed was half a mile back and come straight at me i will just stop and block the road till you reverse.
it a single country track road that non local people think is fit to be used as a rat run at 60 mph..... its not.
It might be quite fun trying to drag a zimmer frame through a narrow gap - they've got some sharp corners on them.
Over on petrolheads or detailing forums there are probably tons of threads about how Zimmer frames are a social menace and how they have to park on the pavement to avoid damage by them
trail_rat - Member
pet hate... folk who drive past a passing place and expect you to stick your car in the ditch or reverse half a mile so they can get past just because you have a 4x4.....
Ohhh I had one of these a few weeks ago..
Dundridge Lane, Hampshire on the way to the Bowman Pub. Teeny lane 1 car wide, farms either side about 500mtrs or so between them, high hedges, field run off and mostly wet due to the large hill one side of it, bit bendy and one blind bend. Gets busy occasionally what with the pub being halfway along it...
So, me in my car, him in his 4x4 RR, I'm about 250mtrs from a little passing place, him 15mtrs... and a stand off ensues. I just sat there waiting for him to reverse but got no indication of him doing so.. so I gesticulated such, got a gesticulation back (and not the one I offered either) so, so we sat there for about 5mins staring each other down.. Who was to move first? Hmmm, getting tactical now and as the minutes roll on more so..
After the 5 mins I got out of the car and walked up to the window and said to the pain of glass "your passing place is 15mtrs behind you, mines 250mtrs and round a bend, mind reversing a bit?" And a blank stare came back. Honestly I thought the guy had died in his seat. So I tapped on the window this time and said the same thing.. this time the retort was, I kid you not "this is my lane, I live on it and you don't so you move"
I laughed loudly and went to sit in my car.
Just as I turned my back his wife got out and no kidding started to shout at him to reverse and gave all the hand signals behind the car for him to follow.. Blow me if he didn't just sit there.
I was cracked up in the car and despite my angst I now found it hilarious.
So a couple more minutes pass and now a HiLux pulling a trailer full of hay coasts up behind me and pretty much instantly the driver got out.. "Oh Ho" I thought, here comes the inevitable red faced Farmer up for a bit of banter.. but he just walked up to the 4x4 bloke and opened the Door, dragged the bloke out by the collar and jumped into the drivers seat and slammed it in reverse and pulled into the passing place 15mtrs up the road, where the blokes wife was standing.. Farmer bloke walks passed me, lend down to my window and said "sorry mate, my Dad can be a **** occasionally"
And I drove on giggling to myself.
😆
Just don't get angry is all I have to offer.
This thread made me laugh as I have a proper issue with this outside my house - everyone else (mostly visitors to neighbours doing it, but also delivery vans). I got proper Victor Meldrew last week when a delivery van delivering to a house the other side of the road parked half on the verge in the mud, got stuck and spun the wheels sending mud halfway down the street and digging a massive hole. FFS!!!I feel like booby-trapping it in some way, ideas?
my grandad had that issues bigdaddy.
He owned the grass lock stock - so stuck an old belfast sink planter between the grass and the drop kerb they were accessing the grass with.
three belfast sinks later.
feel like booby-trapping it in some way, ideas?
I'm all for concreting bollards into the grass in the middle of the night.
A couple of houses down our road now have big lumps of rock along the edge of their grass - they're the ones nearest the building site entrance, so I presume it's issues with site vehicles (the ones who will just drive on the pavement if it's more convenient, even if there are kids on the pavement, or reverse big lorries down the road at 8:45am).
Which reminds me of another standoff I won. Artic on site collecting a digger - it had clearly used the pavement to access the site as there were road works on the other side of the road making access difficult. I went and stood on the pavement waiting for it to leave - got asked to move, site manager said it had to drive on the pavement to get off the site, to which I replied in that case it was staying on site. Driver got down from cab and threatened to call the police to move me for obstruction, I laughed and said I'd look forward to seeing what they thought (in retrospect I wish I'd been less happy about that so that he did call the police). Eventually they worked out they could move the roadwork barriers to squeeze past. Yes I can be an arsey git when I feel like it.
Did someone clone Victor Meldrew a few times whilst I wasn't looking?
who did this, despite the fact that their cars are parked in front of their house complete with muddy wheels and tyre tracks.
They all seem to have damaged wing mirrors by mine
We've got a grass verge between road and pavement in front of our house - someone knocked over the "No parking on grass verges" sign and now the school-runners have made it look like Martin Schanke's been doing skids. 🙁
house keys are not just got getting in the front door. just saying.
Having a chuckle reading this and wondering if trespass could be used here? In the example with the delivery van tearing up the grass, could you issue proceedings against the delivery company to make them pay for the damage?
Anyway, selfish twunts are selfish twunts. Karma will kick in at some point
EDIT: assuming you own the land of course
Noticed when I collected my son from school today that somone had driven all the way down the grass verge along the street and now it looks like a ploughed field.
When considering the overall environmental damage caused by the manufacturing, construction, maintenance and usage of road vehicles and the associated infrastructure, a bit of muddy grass outside my house seems a bit insignificant imo.
pet hate... folk who drive past a passing place and expect you to stick your car in the ditch or reverse half a mile so they can get past just because you have a 4x4.....most of them when you dont move into the ditch will stick their audi into the ditch trying to pass you rather than reverse 10ft......
Oh yes, had this a couple of weeks ago on my way over to pick up a mate to go to the pub. Car coming towards me was approaching a passing place after I'd passed one on my side, so I kept going. He just carried on, then was forced to stop. Halfwit driver just couldn't grasp that the passing place he'd driven past was there for him to use, instead he was convinced that any approaching car should reverse, in the dark, around a bit of a bend, just for his convenience.
Typical Mercedes owner, if you ask me. I didn't think I should reverse my Octavia or drive up onto a narrow grass verge and into a ditch, to save him a few seconds. Prat. 🙄
We had this problem where we used to live when the road layout was changed. Local residents acted very promptly (as a group): We contacted the council (Leeds), who supported our strategic placing of rocks, their only stipulation was that the rocks were painted white, and that the paint was renewed when needed. Once a year we all went out and painted a rock. Quite fun really. We also turned over and reseeded the bad bits, and chucked some wildflower seed in. It helped that the project was owned/driven by a residents' association. Verges still look lovely, and the work fostered some community spirit. Anyone for a hug?
Edit: And WTF is going on with the litter situation / fly-tipping in the South East? The A41 is basically one giant stream of abandoned building waste, and today I walked into town to find two gas boilers dumped on the pavement.
Falkirk council are proposing having no, zero, zilch team of street cleaners and antisocial behaviour enforcement team. So fly tipping, dog poo, litter, graffiti etc will have no-one to clean up, to prosecute or to prevent. At present they have five doing the job 30 used to do, as of next couple of weeks we find out if they have none.
Can you imagine the free for all on dumping waste when this is made public. Half the central belt will use Falkirk as the tip...
Like willjones, my MiL had white rocks on her verge for a while, but when that failed to deter poor driving/parking, they were joined by some short steels, vertically driven. Word soon got around - delivery truck to the pub opposite managed to burst three tyres in one misjudged manoeuvre.
pet hate... folk who drive past a passing place and expect you to stick your car in the ditch or reverse half a mile so they can get past just because you have a 4x4.....most of them when you dont move into the ditch will stick their audi into the ditch trying to pass you rather than reverse 10ft......
Oh yes, had this a couple of weeks ago on my way over to pick up a mate to go to the pub. Car coming towards me was approaching a passing place after I'd passed one on my side, so I kept going. He just carried on, then was forced to stop. Halfwit driver just couldn't grasp that the passing place he'd driven past was there for him to use, instead he was convinced that any approaching car should reverse, in the dark, around a bit of a bend, just for his convenience.
Typical Mercedes owner, if you ask me. I didn't think I should reverse my Octavia or drive up onto a narrow grass verge and into a ditch, to save him a few seconds. Prat. 🙄
Had a good one of those. So I can reverse a Landy towing a trailer with a 7T digger on it 200 yards up a hill round a blind bend, or you can reverse your car 10 yards into a passing place the size of a supermarket car park. A tough choice made easier when the large Yorkshireman I was with suggested a third alternative involving rectal insertion
Had one of those as well, on the Fosseway, not far from Castle Combe. There's a section which drops down pretty steeply, and which has a couple of bends in it, with a passing place on the left on one side of a blind right hand bend, going down, with the other on the opposite side of the road, about a hundred yards the other side of the bend, the slope of the road is about a 1:6,
I've come down the hill, around the bend, to be met by a Micra, coming up, that has passed the passing place on her side by a couple of car lengths. I sat and indicated that they should reverse back into the space just behind. Shakes head. Call over to driver, asking her the just back up a bit. Shakes head. Get out of car, walk over, and again ask the driver, who's sitting staring straight ahead, to just let the car roll back twenty feet, so I can pass. Shakes head again.
At this point I start to lose my temper a bit, and point out to the stupid baggage in her ridiculous little car, that trying to reverse two hundred feet up a steep hill, with a blind bend, is either going to result in my clutch burning out, or my car being rear-ended by a farm vehicle coming around the blind corner, and if she didn't reverse back I was going to pull her out of the car, and reverse the bloody thing myself!
At which point she made a big fuss about not being able to find reverse, see where she was going, etc.
Thing was, all she had to do was keep it in gear, foot on clutch, other foot on brake, and let gravity do its thing and just roll a few feet. 🙄
Ross Noble on how to deal with drivers who won't reverse [url= http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x39a6ch ]From 1:40 onwards :)[/url]
[quote=marcus ]When considering the overall environmental damage caused by the manufacturing, construction, maintenance and usage of road vehicles and the associated infrastructure, a bit of muddy grass outside my house seems a bit insignificant imo.
Yeah what about all that. I presume considering how insignificant it is you drop all your rubbish everywhere as well. Actually now I think about it, given all the pollution China belches out it's pretty pointless us doing anything to protect the environment.
Anyway, back to the passing places thing - I think it was on Skye when I met a woman driving quite a big car who did the driving past the passing place and then refused to reverse. I got out and offered to reverse it for her - at which point she did manage to work it out, though TBH it would have been quicker if I'd done it for her.
I value everyone's opinion but I've got to say that wildflower-leeds-whitestones makes me feel a whole lot warmer that Marcus-FU-not-my-problem-wotyoulookinat.
There's one bit of grass verge near us that has tonnnnnnes of safe, on-street parking near us but it's obviously 15 seconds nearer to the front door of some poxy new-build so the first metre from the kerb now looks like The Somme. Gits.
Ok not grass verge stuff but can I just say 'parents who park on the zig-zags outside their own children's school'.....
Essentially this seems like a series of complaints about the selfish tossers who live in this craphole we call Britain. What a dump this place is.
Can I play? Why don't the selfish so and so's who have a verge outside their house park on it? Not the bloody road.
Now we have off street parking I want to mend the verge that has been chewed up.
I'd like either to stop people parking on it or make it more robust if they do.
People down the road have "ornamental" logs on "their" verge. Can some random stranger relay the grass and plant a little tree on it?
We already have trees and the council planted more trees last year.
Equip yourself with Hi-viz work suit and borrow a white van to park alongside as you plant a tree & support stake; no-one will challenge you.
Use an RSJ for the stake and put it on the road side of the tree.
put a few of these up:
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Interestingly, just around the corner someone put a polite notice up saying "Please do not park on the verge". Surprise, surprise, it appears no-one does.
Trees are good, trees are good.
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Last summer we were coming down the Via del Sole from Prada Alta in our LWB T5 and got to this hairpin
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a German couple in an audi were coming up and refused to drive on the wrong side of the road for 10m so that we could pass each other. In the end after 5 minutes of them sitting shaking their heads I ended up just driving at them so that they were forced to reverse off the corner a bit, which then made them realise that actually there was room to pass. I certainly wasn't going to reverse 2km back up a nearly 20% road. In hindsight, probably not the best road to go over in a longish van, but there was a good view at the top, and i believe the view on the way down was good as well, although I was concentrating quite a lot.
