Why do so many British homes have cars parked in the front yard?
Posted by Jimmy_Johnny23@reddit | AskABrit | View on Reddit | 122 comments
I’ve noticed this in tons of photos and videos — in the UK, it seems super common for people to convert their front yards into makeshift driveways and park right up by the front door. Sometimes there's barely any garden left, just concrete and a car.
Is this just due to limited street parking, or is there something cultural or zoning-related going on? It’s really different from how things are laid out in the U.S. (both single family homes with grass and a driveway to townhomes rarely parking in front of the house.) Just curious if this is out of necessity, habit, or something else entirely.
ImpressNice299@reddit
Cars didn't exist when the UK was built.
Think-Committee-4394@reddit
OP the above is spot on
This is the very accurate answer, a lot of even post ww2 towns and cities were built or rebuilt with no real understanding of how important the car would be in the next 50 years
So parking for those cars was not designed in, fast forward from 1950 to the year 2000 & the housing price increase bites hard
Lots of children start getting jobs, far enough away that they need a car, but without any ability to move out of home
Wives have to work instead of being stay at home mum
People need to keep a work car or van at home as well as a personal vehicle
Suddenly you have estates where provision for ONE parking spot per house was not built in, needing parking for 2, 3, maybe 4 cars & a van!
It’s bye bye garden - front or back whatever you can
No-Safe-911@reddit
How strange in europe they managed it. It is not about thinking of the future, its about saving costs. Even some (most) modern built last year estates have narrow roads with some cars parking on it.... ITS ABOUT COST not future. They didn't care about the future like they do now.
monkeysinmypocket@reddit
The estate my parents live in was built in 1990. They weren't able to predict how many cars we'd have by 2025 any better than previous. generations of builders. All the houses have garages and driveways but a lot of families have 3 or more cars. The whole street is basically a carpark now.
Miserable-Put-2531@reddit
And a lot of garages aren't really big enough anyway
monkeysinmypocket@reddit
A lot of garages end up being domestic storage units because as you say they're not big enough to get a car in and out easily, and modern houses aren't built with anywhere near enough storage space.
Miserable-Put-2531@reddit
So you have to admire Fred West's solution of creating a basement for extra storage.
Plenty of room for anything/anyone
Space_Cowby@reddit
Estates built in the last couple of years are the same. i think now planning permissions restricts this and there is a hope people will use public transport if they cant par there car ! I believe we need planning permission now to convert front garden to a drive
Gallusbizzim@reddit
New estates where I am don't get a bus service either. The bus routes haven't changed much since the 50s.
mullsmullsmullsmulls@reddit
There was a move in the 2000s into the 2010s to restrict car parking in new housing - the idea being that it would discourage car use - and many councils adopted maximum car parking standards (ie the number of allocated parking spaces for a new dwellings was capped). Evidence and experience now show that people will park as many cars as they need, and most councils now have minimum parking standards. Having said that, there is move to try and use more unallocated (eg on street) parking as this is more flexible and you need to provide fewer spaces overall. They are also still encouraged to provide good public transport, and put services within walking distance, so that people aren't so car-reliant.
SnooRegrets8068@reddit
Certainly need a rather expensive drop kerb.
Good_Ad_1386@reddit
Same applies to garages. Our linked garage only accommodated one of the first cars we had when we moved here in the mid 80s, because the house was built in the early 70s. After the Mk1 Astra, almost every car we have had since would only go in if you greased it and exited via the sunroof.
sgst@reddit
This is what I was going to add. My parents house is 30s and has a linked garage, but there is no way you'd ever get a modern car in there.
As a result, like millions of garages up & down the country, they've converted it to be part of the house. Now a downstairs loo and laundry/store room.
Carnationlilyrose@reddit
One of the scariest driving experiences I have had in 50 years of driving was manoeuvring our Honda Civic into the garage of a converted Georgian mews cottage AirBnB in Edinburgh. Getting the car in was a nightmare in the first place, and then I realised I couldn't exit the car once I was in. I've never forgotten it in ten years.
Goldf_sh4@reddit
It all became so normalised that new-build estates don't plan in anywhere near enough parking either, because they make more money from the land by cramming in more housing and less parking space. Schools also don't build in drop-off car parks so any housing around schools get very clogged up with cars.
JCDU@reddit
I'd argue post-war as cars got cheaper & popular a whole lot of Britain was (re)built with the idea that everyone (middle class) would drive everywhere so we got really terribly designed ugly concrete city centres and copy-paste suburbs with a driveway for the husband's Rover and a garage for the housewife's Austin A35 or Mini, neither of which work particularly well for modern cars or families especially as the garage is almost always full of other stuff not a car, and once the children grow up you end up with >2 cars per household and a real parking headache.
In cities it's worse as you have fairly large houses and only the space in front on the street which is maybe 1-1.5 cars worth at most.
Big_Lemon_5849@reddit
The only thing I think you miss is our houses are generally smaller so a typical house can only fit one car length ways in front of it, so as more households have two cars off road parking becomes more of a requirement.
Also no one seems to have the time to tend to a garden these days so a paved area that you can also park on saves having to maintain either a lawn or flower beds.
No_Guest_4127@reddit
basements should have been made
Lumpy-Mountain-2597@reddit
There are actually a lot of older parts of America which were also built before the car existed and have the same problems. But a lot of Americans don't know the rest of America exists I guess.
_Fl0r4l_4nd_f4ding_@reddit
I dont mean to be a prick, but can you clarify? The property you have listed was built in 1985 according to the website, and has what appears to be three plus spaces as a driveway, and a garage
Lumpy-Mountain-2597@reddit
I just googled property in New York. Sorry it wasn't up to rigorous academic standards. But it shows that even in America you have properties with the whole 'front yard' as off road parking. Its not the age of the property, its the space available. I imagine in central New York and San Francisco you could find more properties that have similar parking solutions to UK homes in older areas. It's not the country, it's the age of the area and the availability of space. Is that contentious just because my hasty Google search didn't clinch it for you without forcing you to think?
_Fl0r4l_4nd_f4ding_@reddit
Lol i really wasnt meaning to be a prick, i was asking you to clarify. And i also wasnt expecting rigorous standards. I just didnt get the context link between the property and your comment.
So, thank you for clarifying. It makes much more sense to me now. It was because you mentioned pre- car houses and then listed a house with approx. 3 car parking spaces available, one of which was built in. It just didnt make sense in my brain.
I am very sorry for how i clearly offended and upset you with my comment and i apologise if it came across in the wrong way. Again, i was not trying to be a prick (although despite clarifying this, i clearly still was interpreted as one!)
If you must know, i read your comment about five times over, and re-clicked on the link about 3 times (maybe more), looking through each and every picture. I spent a good long while thinking for a bit about the point you were making. Hence why i asked for clarification because, like i said before, it didnt make sense to me and i was kinda stuck in a loop trying to figure out your point.
I do not intend to quibble at all, and i completely agree that parking outside your own house can be a premium anywhere.
Im yet to look at your new link but will check it out in a sec.
Genuinely, i hope you have a nice day (and dont jump the gun on any more folk today, i guess lol- an easy mistake to make). Tone sometimes comes across weird via text online, so no offence intended and none taken!
Lumpy-Mountain-2597@reddit
You're right. As someone pointed out, I was a prick and I apologise. Sometimes Reddit seems like you can't say anything, however innocuous, without someone always demanding you clarify it and prove every last point, rather than a place where you can just exchange ideas and come away knowing more than you did before. I mistook your post as the former - when I thought it was a really very uncontroversial point. But it's on me. You have a good day and thanks for being the bigger person after my outburst.
Re: your final point, the San Francisco properties are interesting. Many of them are built right on the road, but have garages under the house. So I assume this means they were actually built after the rise of the automobile, but where space was still at a premium - so they built up as a solution. This actually implies I am wrong and that it's not just the age of the area - it's both that and the age of the house. In England for example, obviously a 120 year old house won't have had a garage built under it - but more modern houses in London often do. And it seems that even in areas where space was more available, garages were built to the side so they could have a lawn - but then they've still gone and concreted over it - presumably because now families have several cars not just the one expected when it was built. In the UK we have 1930s houses which were built with garages, or drives, where the same thing has happened. It is quite interesting.
_Fl0r4l_4nd_f4ding_@reddit
Absolutely no worries whatsoever, and I really appreciate you responding! Also majorly agree!
And huh yeah thats fascinating!
Just because its oddly relevant:
I currently live in a rented uk victorian terrace, close to city centre, one of many rows of narrow terraced streets packed into a small area. My partner and i have bought and are renovating a 50's ex council house on a spacious council estate. Part of the reason we chose the property is for the exact problem described above with parking. Our current place has no designated spot at all, we are lucky to get a space on our road, and we have to apply for a parking permit in order to park there. As a disabled person, its a bloody nightmare. Our new place has a designated 1 car driveway but enough grass in the front yard to fit 2 extra cars and maybe more (plan being to extend the driveway over some of the grass). Ironically, one of our only gripes is that despite the spacious off road parking, theres still so many cars on such a short cul de sac that theres always someone blocking our driveway and no on street parking spaces left! Since we havent moved in yet we've told the neighbours they can park in our drive for the time being to ease up the issue, but im not sure what they'll do once we're in! Our property was vacant for multiple years before we bought it i believe, so parking is only going to get worse once we live there.
Lumpy-Mountain-2597@reddit
Parking in Victorian streets is a nightmare. My first house was a terrace as well and I remember that feeling of dread coming home to see if there was any chance of parking within 2 streets of my house! I guess the problem is that even for houses designed for a car, no one expected people to have mum, dad and sometimes two adult kids living at home to mean people have 4 cars per household! Sometimes I wonder why we made such a fuss about the Covid pandemic. It was a potential solution to so many problems... for the survivors of course. Lol ;)
_Fl0r4l_4nd_f4ding_@reddit
Oh i am well aquainted with that feeling of dread haha
And yes I think you've hit the nail on the head there! And to add on to it, there are 3 large work vans on our new road alone, which bonnet to boot in a row is pretty much the entire length of the street. One belongs to a family with personal vehicles, and TWO belong to another family with personal vehicles. The guy with the second van has had to start parking it around the corner and down the road
.. Yeah covid taught us so many lessons we then promptly forgot haha
MarrV@reddit
Christ you have an awful attitude for someone pointing out a clarification to your post. The only "prick" here is you.
Lumpy-Mountain-2597@reddit
I know I am. But I'd rather be a prick than someone who has to have every idea spoon-fed to them in perfectly finished dissertations. You can't make even a pretty uncontroversial broad point on Reddit without someone always finding a way to argue with some finer detail in it. Sorry if it fucks me off sometimes, but christ alive, don't people ever just consider a point and go 'oh yeah, I see what you mean, interesting point', instead of needing it to be a watertight soundbite? Yours faithfully - Prickface
ArmouredWankball@reddit
It can be the case even on the west coast. Our house in San Jose, California was built in 1936 and has no parking provision at all even though it's detached. It's street parking or nothing.
snipdockter@reddit
So where did we park our horses?
EmFan1999@reddit
What horses? Most people didn’t have them
MarvinArbit@reddit
No but there were a lot of community stables and carriage houses for businesses. Many neighbourhoods have the carriage houses still scattered about as every business used them.
EmFan1999@reddit
Yeah opposite my house is a pub and it still has old stables they now use for storage
Sasspishus@reddit
Are you aware of stables?
JohnLennonsNotDead@reddit
With the neigh-bour
BigBlueMountainStar@reddit
Horses didn’t exist when the UK was built either.
ImpressNice299@reddit
Attached to a post at the end of the street or in stables.
colin_staples@reddit
Perfect comment.
Also explains why we don't buy US cars - they are too big for our roads.
ESP_Viper@reddit
Yet even then the future UK ran on horsepower.
blowfish1977@reddit
Cars were expensive and the poor walked or took the bus. It wasn't even a consideration that the working classes would have cars.
dave11113@reddit
Lovely 😄
Sxn747Strangers@reddit
Poetry.
Indigo-Waterfall@reddit
Because most of the houses were built before having a personal car existed. And definitely before having multiple cars per household.
Jimmy_Johnny23@reddit (OP)
The house I grew up in was built in 1890, so before the car, but we had an alley behind the house to park in.
Indigo-Waterfall@reddit
I’m not sure I understand the point youre making or what it has to do with the majority of other houses that didnt have alleys behind their house… ?
Jimmy_Johnny23@reddit (OP)
No judgement here- just asking questions.
Indigo-Waterfall@reddit
I didn’t think there was judgement? What is there to judge? I didn’t build the houses lol. I’m just trying to understand what the relevance of what you said to what I said to understand your point.
Jimmy_Johnny23@reddit (OP)
Here are alleys on terraced housing. Why not put the parking back here?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/bd8PjRrFmCFCQD7EA
Indigo-Waterfall@reddit
It doesn’t look like there is enough space to fit a car behind there. Let alone a whole row of houses with multiple cars per household? Plus those are to gain access to the back of gardens of a row of terraced houses . If there was, I’m sure they would convert them to parking spaces. But that doesn’t change the fact that fact that the reason there isn’t much parking spaces, is because when most houses in UK were designed, cars were not needed to be a factor, therefore, in high density populated areas, most people have park on the road. Unless they are able to convert another space into a parking spaces.
MeghanSOS@reddit
try find a parking spot in the street
Jimmy_Johnny23@reddit (OP)
How could you if th entire street is driveways?
terryjuicelawson@reddit
Well, exactly - this can happen. There would already be more cars wanting to park than space, especially areas with a lot of shared houses and multiple cars. Only disabled badge holders can claim a space as theirs. The more people get a driveway, the less availability and it makes more drives happen. It can also be because people from outside the area park there, commuters or shoppers.
davus_maximus@reddit
You kinda have to get lucky and find a vacant spot between dropped kerbs.
ALittleNightMusing@reddit
It's often mixed, so a couple of houses with front gardens converted into driveways, then a few more houses without that, then one built with a garage, then one with a long front garden, then two more driveways etc. So there are spaces where you can park on the street, but they get busy.
terryjuicelawson@reddit
I have a front garden converted to a driveway. Basically no one uses them anyway, there is a road out there, they are small, maybe you can grow a few plants but the back is where it all happens. People fight for a space on the actual road outside, I have lived places you may need to circle ten times and walk around a block home. Not ideal with a car full of shopping. But some are extreme, like if they only have a narrow garden and the car has to parallel park so be sideways against the lounge window.
LimitFine5869@reddit
We don’t have yards
davus_maximus@reddit
Yes we do. Concrete yards, sometimes walled yards, are common especially in Victorian terraces.
LimitFine5869@reddit
Not in the front which op refers to Mr Pedantic!
Odd-Quail01@reddit
Lots of terraced houses do
LimitFine5869@reddit
I live in one but has a garden
Odd-Quail01@reddit
I live in one that has a yard.
GlitteringBryony@reddit
Houses with built-in garages are often ones built between the 1970s-1990s, and the garages tend to be sized for the cars of that era - ie, smaller - so it's hard to park a modern car in them. Because of that, a lot of the houses that have inbuilt garages either use them for something else (laundry room, workshop, keeping a motorbike or gardening stuff) or have converted them into another downstairs room. (This is changing lately though, as houses start to be built for electric car compatibility, so very new houses now often have a bigger garage with a socket for the car, to allow them to charge up without having the cable on the pavement outside)
Generally, it's just seen as a bit rude to park in the road if you have the space to park the car on your own land, and there often aren't any other options, and also some insurance companies will charge you less for a car parked on private land rather than on a public road, because of perceived less chamce of being damaged by a passer-by.
Jimmy_Johnny23@reddit (OP)
Why not build a garage with the living space above it? Something like this:
https://www.newhomesource.com/plan/raleigh-lennar-little-canada-mn/2851663
GlitteringBryony@reddit
We have quite a few of those, but they're unpopular because they're seen as making a closed-off and unwelcoming street layout (ie, instead of big windows looking out onto the garden, there is this closed and featureless garage door) and again, older ones tend to have too small a garage for a modern car. Plus, they aren't great for disabled access, when there is a goal to have all new builds be fully wheelchair accessible within something like ten years.
That said, I have seen more modern versions where there is a balcony on top of the garage, and the garage is much bigger, which look pretty nice - But they're in a hilly area where you get the level access to the ground floor with the living room on the other side of the house.
scrapheaper_@reddit
Why would I waste space inside my house on a car? Fuck that. What's even the point of cars being inside?
crucible@reddit
This is a style of house with the garage built to the side of the property:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/160408700#/?channel=RES_BUY
This is a Street View of a newer housing estate where very few of the properties were built with a driveway or garage. Instead there are communal parking areas around the estate.
Housing policy since the 1950s or so has been to build large suburban ‘estates’ with two or three styles of house throughout the development. As the UK has become an increasingly car dependent society that has typically included building a driveway and garage with each house.
Our zoning laws are slightly different and there is usually a small parade of shops like this somewhere on most estates - typical shops will include takeaway food businesses, a laundrette, hair salon / barbers, a convenience store, newsagent, pharmacy etc.
blahdee-blah@reddit
New builds are not that common and we don’t have a lot of space in urban areas. A lot of our cities have whole areas of Victorian terraces, for example. Not car-centred.
Large-Dot-2753@reddit
The UK has some of the oldest housing stock in Europe. 38 percent of houses were built before 1945 for example. Fewer than 7 percent of houses were build within thr last decade - and a huge number of those will be apartments.
The overwhelming majority of people therefore do not live in new houses.
Where there are new houses (and far too few a year have been built for many decades), they are some of the smallest Europe as developers generally want to fit as many houses into as small a space as possible
In terms of the houses you show, firstly they are huge so "too big" for the UK. Secondly, British people tend to like to access their garden straight from the house generally, so the living quarters being in the first floor would prevent this. This way of living is more of a priority than car storage.
erinoco@reddit
Quite a few of the inter-war houses in the better heeled suburbs were built with garages; but, almost without exception, these are far too small for modern vehicles, and end up being repurposed in the manner you describe.
GlitteringBryony@reddit
I will admit to going green with envy at the ones that still have the cute folding wooden doors on them XD
porterham@reddit
Talking about new builds though, they are regulated to limit car spaces on drives to encourage the use of public transport but all it does it make everyone park on the road. All new builds estates are car parks
Super_Construction_4@reddit
Many UK houses were built before mass proliferation of cars, so dont have driveways or only have room for 1 car. Most families have multiple cars, even moreso now that houses are so expensive children cant afford to move out until they are approaching 30 often.
US homes, roads, and driveways were largely designed and built after the days of horse-drawn carriages when cars were a design concern. Also US jobs pay far more and houses are slightly cheaper, so children often move out earlier.
Dizzy_Media4901@reddit
It's worse than that. A lot of the USA was deliberately built around the car.
Companies either built or lobbied cities and town heavily to place schools, public buildings, and retail as far apart as possible.
Those wide roads, drives, and parking lots weren't an aesthetic choice. They were to make sure homeowners had to buy multiple cars.
JCDU@reddit
A lot of the UK was too, post-war, but we never had the space America does so we got huge concrete city centres with massive multi-storey car parks that were at best very difficult to walk or cycle or get public transport to. Did help with filming some Dr Who episodes though.
Thankfully they've been steadily demolishing them for the last few decades although out-of-town shopping got big in the 90's-2000's and that needs to (mostly) die and revert back to proper town centres with decent public transport.
Dizzy_Media4901@reddit
Thank Thatcher for the retail parks. The Tories sold loads of old industrial space dirt cheap.
The plan was to make it safe and use it for retail and housing. Tesco et al. bought it up and used the easy to clean space for stores. Then, they left the messy bits for the taxpayer.
JCDU@reddit
Ah, Thatcher and Reagan, those two did so much for the world.
TheShakyHandsMan@reddit
Along with having no walking routes between logical places and making it illegal to cross the road outside of specific locations. They really don’t like people using alternatives to driving.
iwantsomechocolat3@reddit
Do most families have multiple cats?
JCDU@reddit
Usually 2, sometimes 3+ if there's a teenager or milennial who can't afford to move out (plus maybe their parter), or if there's a car enthusiast, or a camper van, or a boat, etc. etc.
Super_Construction_4@reddit
Yes, i dont know any that have less than 2.
doc1442@reddit
The US also has wild urban sprawl with massive cities and house plots. So there is simply more room to store a car, but they are also absolutely essential.
G30fff@reddit
comes down to lack of space
Gauntlets28@reddit
It looks like in the place you've linked to in the US, there's an access alleyway around the back of the buildings where some people have put driveways. Some houses in the UK have that, where people will park in the alley around the back if it's accessible enough. Unfortunately, many houses in the UK don't have enough space around the back to do that, so the next best thing for keeping them off the road is to turn the front garden into a driveway, which isn't ideal, but that's what you get for living in an area built before the advent of widespread car ownership.
One other factor which could be relevant, but that I'm not sure about - here in the UK, the price of car insurance is affected by many things - one of which is where you keep the car at night. Cars that are kept off-road on a driveway tend to be a bit cheaper, which might make some people more inclined to build a driveway out front, even if it's not a very good one. Not sure if it works the same way in the US, or not?
bunnymama7@reddit
Many places charge you to park on the road. Our houses are small and people often convert their garages into an extra room.
ClevelandWomble@reddit
We don't usually sit in front of our houses on an evening, so the front garden is just an obligation to maintain for bo real benefit. Ours is paved for three cars, our neighbours for two. There is not enough space on the narrow urban street for another five cars.
Our houses were built in 1928.
EntrepreneurWide3810@reddit
I can have a shitty patch of grass as a buffer between my house and the common folk,
Or
I can have a shitty car as a buffer between my house and the world.
The latter takes less upkeep and saves me on fixing my wing mirrors as much.
davus_maximus@reddit
A large number of houses ditched their token front garden in favour of off-street parking. It was often a case of "pave the tiny front garden or forever jostle for a parking space a street away". As others have said, much of our housing stock was built long before car ownership was possible and back then, there was no contention for the on-street parking. People have since had to adapt.
My house is 120 years old, but I have a useful concrete yard (our definition of "yard" is quite different) which is luckily ideal for parking. My front garden is about the size of a rug.
Goldf_sh4@reddit
1) The houses are worth more to sell if there's off-road parking 2) In busy towns anc cities, there is often limited street parking and often you often can't find a space to park in near your house 3) People often have to pay the local council for a permit to park outside their houses and you are still not guaranteed to be able to find a space near your house. 4)Sometimes neighbours argue with each other because one person will ask their neighbour not to park outside their house, even though they have no legal right to park on the road directly outside their house and then the neighbour will spend years quietly seething with rage that their neighbour did that. (It's me. I'm still seething).
Starlinkukbeta@reddit
Yard? Please explain, do you mean front garden ?
crucible@reddit
This is almost exactly the style of house that my parents and I lived in for a few years when I was a child:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/161492033#/?channel=RES_BUY
It’s a very 1960s / 1970s style build with an integrated garage… if you scroll down and look at the floor plan it robs quite a bit of the space on that floor.
The owners of the linked property have modernised and extended it. Mainly by adding a second separate toilet and building a conservatory / sun room on the rear of the house.
There’s a common trope in the UK that the garage is full of junk and gardening equipment while the expensive car sits in the driveway outside…
As I recall there was a single driveway in front of the garage with a gravel path to the front door and maybe a small patch of grassy
We actually drove past our old house a few months ago as we were in the area. Many of the houses need it now have the entire front yard converted to parking. Some houses actually had the garage converted to living space, too.
MuttonDressedAsGoose@reddit
Yes, I would want a very large house before I'd spare the space for a car.
TeamOfPups@reddit
I live on a 20 year old housing development. Every house was built with a garage and parking space. By now, most of the garages are not in use as garages. People are either using them for storage, or they have converted them into an extra room (MUCH cheaper than moving).
Most families have multiple cars.
It is now illegal here to park on the kerb/pavement and the road isn't really wide enough to accommodate all the parking without parking on the kerb/parking.
So a lot of the front gardens have been paved over by the residents enabling to park two cars there.
We all have gardens behind our houses and that's the outside space where people spend time anyway.
SingerFirm1090@reddit
"Is this just due to limited street parking, or is there something cultural or zoning-related going on?"
Partly it is limited street parking or living on roads where parking is not permitted (like mine). There is also no 'right' to the parking space on the street outside your home, if someone else is parked there, tough.
In the UK we have front and rear gardens, yards are something builders have.
It's a bit rude to call these 'makeshift', many are paved and expensive.
By a coincidence, having off-street parking will be an advantage when EVs become common as charging will be easier.
hime-633@reddit
America big, UK small. Particularly when it comes to road width.
Like, genuinely, as our ve-hicles become more Americanised (i.e. unnecessarily large, for most parts of the UK), road parking is increasingly an issue because in many cases it reduces two lanes to one.
DearDegree7610@reddit
Vay-hicles was funny.
But yeah Theres a reason you don’t see any cybertrucks here - cos theyre not legal: too big.
One got seized near me a couple of months ago and it made national news hahaha
colin_staples@reddit
Size has nothing to do with it. We have large vehicles here. I don't think a cybertruck is bigger than a LWB Transit Van
A cybertruck is not legal here because it hasn't gone through the necessary homologated process and crash testing for the U.K./EU (which are different to the US)
No-Stuff-1320@reddit
They’re not illegal cos of size are they? Wouldn’t make sense. I thought it was health and safety for pedestrians if you crash into them
doc1442@reddit
Too big, too heavy, corners too sharp
DearDegree7610@reddit
The corners! I’d forgotten about that, that was deffo mentioned
DearDegree7610@reddit
I think they’re slightly too wide (I think, happy to be educated otherwise) but yeah they also contravene euro NCAP standards.
My knowledge of this is based entirely on one news report I read 3 months ago so not an expert haha
Obeetwokenobee@reddit
I love it when I can park my old small car, totally within the white parking lines of a public parking space, with my passenger side right up close to the other drivers side who's car is far too big to fit in the parking spaces.
mcshaggin@reddit
Some of our homes are old. Built before cars were even invented.
My house for instance is one of those with cars parked right up to the front door.
It was originally just a front garden because the house is old. It was converted to a small drive to make room for an extra car in front of the house.
As families now often have more than one car, parking space on the street is limited so we need drives
mr-dirtybassist@reddit
Well. As you can see by the picture, some of our housing estates do not have garages or drives. So there's no alternative but to have a parking war with your neighbours
geeoharee@reddit
They're not "makeshift driveways". They're driveways, to park your car on, so as not to have to park it in the road. I don't understand what you think people should do instead.
Lynex_Lineker_Smith@reddit
Where else do you expect us to put them ?
Joanna_C_McGoolies@reddit
Because that's the extent of land on each property, we don't all have an extra acre just out of shot of the lots of pictures and video's you've seen. I can understand questions being asked that are hard to find answers for without actually asking a British person, but surely this is a pretty basic thing to have just researched? Sure, you don't get this kind of interaction with a Google search, and I'm really not trying to be unkind, but you said in your question that you've seen lots of video and picture evidence that answers your question already. Why do you disbelieve what you are seeing?
truckosaurus_UK@reddit
In the picture the OP posts, it looks like the houses on that street use their back yards for parking (and bins) so perhaps not the best example.
SlinkyBits@reddit
garden is in the back, not the front of the house. people tend not to want to sunbathe and have a BBQ infront of thier house LOL
so why not use he space for something good
Emzydreams@reddit
If we left them on the road, they would get eaten by pot holes
Stunning_Anteater537@reddit
This is such an underrated comment. I actually snorted, thanks for making me smile 😁
Emzydreams@reddit
Law of averages, bound to say something funny one day 😂
IcyPuffin@reddit
When most towns and cities were built, cars simply did not exist. Even when places expanded - or when they built the new towns in the 50s and 60s, there were not as many cars as we have now - cars were expensive and as a result not everyone had one. So it's simply a case that places were not built with cars in mind as they were not a thing they needed to consider.
However life moves on and cars got cheaper More people got cars. More people started to rely on cars. We went from families who's only car was owned by the well off retired grandparents to a world where the parents had one car. Then to a society where it was more common for everyone in a family to own a car as they either needed it due to work and a lack of good public transport or they just got a car because it was expected and the done thing.
We are left with the parking dilemma because if this. Streets that once had maybe 3 or 4 cars parked have multiple times that many. Even though sky every household has multiple cars - plenty still only have 1 - there still isn't space for them all. So they concert thier front garden into parking.
It will be a similar case all over the world where towns and cities were built before cars were thought of.
Parasaurlophus@reddit
A lot of UK roads are very narrow. Even parking European size cars means that there isn't space to have a car outside every house while having cars drive both ways up the road. The only way to guarantee a parking space anywhere near your house is to gravel your front garden space. Many houses don't have garages or original driveways.
travis_6@reddit
Using your example street in the US, just look around and all those houses have garages in the back down the alley. Older houses in the UK don't have personal garages like that.
We never had the car culture until very recently. A good thing too, since mass transit in most of the US is now impossible given the low density neighbourhoods
pjf_cpp@reddit
Also the UK has about 3x the population density of the USA.
huesodelacabeza@reddit
It's not just the invention of the car, my estate was built this millennium and the houses are right up to the pavement with no gardens out of a need to cram as many properties (and therefore profit) into the smallest possible space.
The estate is mostly 3 stories too, which was previously unheard of for a small northern ex-mining village
TheCocoBean@reddit
For most british homes with a garden its behind the house.
Sxn747Strangers@reddit
It’s a bit less likely to get knocked if it’s on a drive, even if it wasn’t a drive previously. Plus it can affect your car’s insurance if it’s on the road even if it is right in front of your house.
Our washing machine and tumble dryer used to be stacked in a downstairs toilet as there’s not enough room in the kitchen, (they used to be in the kitchen at a previous house), so they were moved to the garage, part of which has been turned into a utility room and a car wouldn’t fit in there now.
There’s stuff in the garage on account there’s nowhere else to keep it, paint, tools, wood and so on.
yogafitter@reddit
I mean I’m not a Brit but 90% of the time people park where there’s room. So a car in the yard means they don’t have a driveway or garage, or those places are full with other things
LoudAdhesiveness3263@reddit
It makes more sense when you understand the vast difference of scale between the two countries. I knew it was a bigger place over in the states, but it still absolutely blew my mind when i was over there.. like small rural towns in america, if you're on the outskirts, your nearest neighbour could be a 5-10 minute walk away.. in the uk, you're hard pushed to find a walk of maybe 2 minutes in 'built up' areas.
Accomplished_Luck404@reddit
We don’t have any room here. A lot of streets are terraced housing where the front door is straight onto the path. The streets are littered with cars. You’re lucky if you have a patch of grass you can store a vehicle on
qualityvote2@reddit
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