WIBU to remove the sign from the car parked outside my house?

[JoinYourPlayfellows]

OK, so I live in a town on a street with public parking. Most of the houses (including mine) do not have off-street parking.

BACKGROUND:
Recently my neighbours have started campaigning for "resident parking", because they are pissed off that people who work in the town, or come to go shopping, park on our street and they can't park near their houses.

I don't support this campaign, because as far as I can see, the busiest time when it is hardest to get parking on our street is on Sunday evening. This is when everyone is at home. The problem is not with OUTSIDERS having the temerity to park on a public road, it's that there is not enough parking for the people who live on our street.

I have never voiced my lack of support for this campaign, but I haven't put a sign in my window about it.

THE ISSUE AT HAND
Yesterday evening when I was on my way home from work I saw that someone had put a polypocket with a Residents Parking Please sign inside it under the windscreen wipers of the car parked outside my house.

Now this crosses a line for me. I think it is intimidation to start flyering people's cars like that because they (totally legally) park on our street.

I am pretty pissed off about this, particularly as it was done to the car directly outside my house, because I think it implicates me in the message being given to the driver of the car - namely that he shouldn't have parked there.

So I removed the sign. What do you think? Was I right to do that? I'm pretty pissed off about this whole thing.

Parking used to be a tiny pain in the arse that was dealt with civilly by all of us. Now it's turning into this really fraught, annoying issue that people are getting really angry about. (Including me at this point.)

[kinkyfuckery]

No you weren't right to remove the sign?

It wasn't your car, not your issue to sort out!

[StillNoFuckingEyeDeer]

I don't think you were being unreasonable.

The sign on the car was bullying.

[JoinYourPlayfellows]

Well the sign seemed to speak for me and it was saying something I strongly object to.

[EldritchCleavage]

I sympathise, but yes you were. People should be able to communicate and campaign about this, including by leafleting and posters. I don't think you have the right to stop that just because it happened outside your house. It isn't aggressive or wrong to put a campaign leaflet on a car.

[Imaginethat]

It's fine.

Go with what you believe in.

You'll have to save it to put on the windscreen of a car visiting one of the lobbyists...

[ReginaldBlinker]

YANBU. It would make me think it had come from you if I was that car owner. Yes, they have a right to flyer, but you have a right to "un-flyer" too.

[wink1970]

You seem to be taking an entirely unusual grown-up attitude to parking, so well done.

The sign was outside your house, so it's reasonable for the car owner to assume you put it there (unless one was on every car on the street, in which case you were still not unreasonable but perhaps overly-jumpy).

[JoinYourPlayfellows]

"It would make me think it had come from you if I was that car owner."

Yes, that's what I was afraid of.

[VanitasVanitatum]

It may be a bit intimidating for the person parking perfectly legally though eldritch. I think you have to have a permit to leaflet cars don't you? In towns there are restrictions because of the rubbish it causes.

The leafleteers should be targeting the council who make the decisions, not the car owners who are parking legally.

[NoComet]

I don't think YABU
If cars are legally parked they should not be leafleted that's intimidation.

If people want residents parking they should lobby the council.

If it's anything like my nearest town, the council charging stupid money for in town parking is the cause of non residents using your road to start with.

[JoinYourPlayfellows]

"You seem to be taking an entirely unusual grown-up attitude to parking."

I would like to defend my usual childish responses to most issues! :o

"unless one was on every car on the street"

No, as far as I could tell, this was targeted because the car was not recognised as belonging to a resident.

If they'd all been done (including mine) I would have just rolled my eyes about it.

[Hegsy]

Was the sign advertising the petition or basically asking the driver not to park there and implying only residents should park there? If the latter then no YANBU. No legal restrictions no trying to force 'outsiders' to move.

[JoinYourPlayfellows]

"the council charging stupid money for in town parking is the cause of non residents using your road to start with."

No, that's not it.

The non-residents just park there because it's basically in the town. All they do is use the spaces vacated when residents drive to work. It's really NO PROBLEM at all.

That's why I live here - I love being so close to everything.

[BlackbeltinBS]

If it was a targeted criticism of that car and telling them to move, then good for you.

The day we moved into our old house (at that time no residents permits, council later brought them in) I had to park in front of the next door but one house as nearest available spot to our house. Next day went to the car and found a note saying "don't park here again" - it really shook me up, then I got angry - I did suspect the people who lived in that house and nearly tackled them, but calmed down enough to realise it might not be them and might be some other nosy parker with a clipboard and spreadsheet of residents' cars. After that whoever it was obviously realised we'd moved in and never happened again, but really soured me on the neighbours!

[BlackbeltinBS]

Oh and I should point out about six months later a new neighbour moved in next door. Got a space outside his house. When he went to move his car he produced a couple of traffic cones to save "his" space. I put these back in his front garden every time I saw them until he gave up.

[ChippingInNeedsSleepAndCoffee]

YWNU

I'd have done the same thing as well, if I felt the way you do.

I was parked outside a house the other night, public road, no 'resident parking' etc and this woman asked me to move as I was parked outside of her house and she wanted to park there, even though she was currently parked a few cars down (about 3 or 4). I was taken aback. I had my friends child in the car (I was taking her to her tutors house as a favour to my friend). I said 'Well, we are visiting here' and she asked who I was visiting - normally I would have said 'None of your business' but I didn't want to cause a problem for the woman who does the tutoring from home, so I said 'X' and she said 'Oh well, can we swap places then as I'm parked outside her house'

[Viviennemary]

If somebody has the right to put a random sign on a car then somebody else has the right to remove it.

[MikeOxard]

I love your attitude - so used to hearing people being childish about parking! YANBU, and I'd have done the same if the car was outside my house.

[wink1970]

sorry OP, just realised my sentence could be taken either way - it was a compliment, honest!

If it was just the 1 car then you were absolutely right. Years ago (and I mean decades) a visitor to my house had his window smashed & his car rolled into the middle of the cul-de-sac, and found a note saying "this wouldn't have happened if you had parked on your drive".

Now, he was a tit sometimes and I can/could imagine that he had parked in an inconsiderate way, but a note is the start of this type of behaviour......

[ChippingInNeedsSleepAndCoffee]

If someone had put that on my car I would have rolled my eyes and though 'ODFO' I'll park where I like - it's not YOUR road.

I fully intend to park where I parked the other night next time I take my friends DD to her tutors if there isn't a convenient spot outside the tutors house.

In fact, if Demanding Bint hadn't been parked where she was, I would have parked there myself, so SHE created the problem

[JoinYourPlayfellows]

See, I don't want to live on the kind of road where people do that kind of thing, Chipping.

Or a flyering, traffic cone kind of place. It's just too tense and everyone getting all worked up about what the perceive to be THEIR parking space.

It's so rude and unnecessary.

My neighbours are great. If they notice a space outside our house they might knock on the door and tell us so we can move our car there if we want to.

But they seem to be losing the plot about this a little bit.

"I put these back in his front garden every time I saw them until he gave up."

You are my new hero, Blackbelt :)

[wibblyjelly]

The person who put the sign on the car must have been watching though, as they knew it wasn't a resident parking there. If so, why didn't they go out and give the leaflet to the person by hand? Probably because they didn't want to have a confrontation, so has sneakily put it on their car once they'd gone.
I don't think you are bu to remove it, as you said if it was done outside your house, you don't want people thinking it was you.

[gobbynorthernbird]

People do this on our street, I don't get it, there is always enough parking space for the residents. They have now lobbied the council and residents only parking is being introduced. So we all have to pay for a permit to park on our own street. (And for visitors, etc). Idiots.

[OrmirianResurgam]

I don't blame you. On-street parking tends to turn otherwise rational people into fire-breathing dragons. We had 13 years of that misery and I would not move into a house without a drive and/or garage every again. The horrible truth is that some areas were not designed with cars in mind so there is no way there will always been enough parking for everyone. If that is a problem for you, don't move there!

There was a big fuss here recently when one street had double yellows added all along one side. Until that point people had parked on both sides. Which meant that when bins or recycling was being collected the entire street ground to a halt while the lorry had to negotiate all the parked cars. As it was a through route in an area of victorian houses it caused major havoc. You would think that the council was demanding the sacrifice of the first born of every household by the screams of outrage!! Roads have one main purpose - allowing vehicles to move along them - parking is an optional extra. I know it's a PITA. Been there done it.

Anyway if your parking obsessives get their residents parking it won't necceesarily help. It only means they are allowed to park on that street if there is a space. If there aren't any spaces they are just as badly off. And if everyone in the street applies for one or two permits there might well be too many cars anyway. In theory it prevents non-residents from parking there but that only works if a warden happens to come along and inspect at the right time to see it. And as you pointed out, in most cases it isn't 'incomers' causing the problems, it's too many residents with cars in a street with not enough parking.

[JoinYourPlayfellows]

"So we all have to pay for a permit to park on our own street. (And for visitors, etc). Idiots."

I swear, I will be so pissed off if this stupid campaign means I have to pay to park on my own street.

They council aren't going to be able to magic up more spaces, so it will just make parking more restrictive and expensive.