How does a normal civilian track down the owner of the plate? And in my neighborhood, about half of them are going to come back as owned by Ford Motor Company.
Well, when my cousin-in-law was followed by a guy in a car who had first threatened him in a parking lot, he pulled into the local police station, and told his story, and the cops looked up the plates.
I’m pretty sure a landowner could do the same for an illegally parked vehicle.
It turned out the car was owned by a local mafia family, and the rest of the story is interesting, but not relevant to this thread. My cousin survived intact.
TruCelt was talking about a car parked in violation of a “private, gated community” 's rules. Those rules don’t have the force of law. If someone illegally parks in my driveway, the police are not going to look up the plates and give me the owner’s name and address so I can knock on the door. ( which wouldn’t help if it was someone visiting one of my neighbors anyway). They’re going to write a ticket and tell me to call the towing company , which will tow the car at the car owner’s expense. However, they very possibly wouldn’t do * anything* if it was a car parked in violation of a gated community’s rules , just like they don’t enforce “This space is reserved for pregnant customers” spots in parking lots.
There are laws against trespassing. If a private gated community owns the roads, they can set rules for how those roads are used. And yes, I would expect the law to back them.
If someone parked a car on the public street blocking my driveway, I’d expect the police to help me get it towed. If someone parted a car on my property, I would expect the police to be more helpful, and yes, to tell me whose car it was.
The law does back them - it allows the HOA to have the car towed as TruCelt said. It doesn’t follow that the police would have to give the car owner’s identifying information to the HOA.
You might expect it, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. But why would you even care whose car it was? Presumably you wouldn’t need to police to tell you if it was your neighbor’s car so there’s little chance that knowing who the owner is will tell you which door to knock on.
We live in the 'burbs and have a two-car garage with an automatic opener. When we bought the house, I used the garage and my wife parked in the driveway (she wasn’t comfortable parking in the garage). As we gathered more junk, the garage eventually got so full that we couldn’t fit even one car in there. When I got a new-ish car in 2015, we cleaned out the garage enough to fit a car in it, and it’s stayed that way ever since.
I have had a car parked in my driveway unexpectedly. The police ran the plate… gave me her name, address, and her phone number. None registered to me so the police arranged to have the car towed.
Had I recognized the name, etc. I would have gone and knocked/called to see what was up.
Why would I care? Maybe it’s actually someone I know, and I don’t want the car towed. Maybe I feel threatened, and want to know what’s up.
I suppose each police department probably has some discretion in these matters, but it seems completely normal to me for them to be helpful to a property owner dealing with someone’s car in the wrong place.
As has been said:
- It’s not my neighborhood, it’s my Dad’s, and I don’t like it either.
- It’s a gated community. If a car is parked out of place and no one has register edit as a guest then it is trespassing, and they will have it towed.
- I’m sure the security guys would then be combing the neighborhood for the driver of the vehicle who is also obviously where s/he shouldn’t be.
I don’t think they would give you any information on the owner. But if the plates came up with the same last name as a neighbor, I hope they’d go knock on the door before towing it. I hope.
In my neighborhood? Probably not. On my private property? (I gave the example of my driveway.) I rather expect they would tell me who owned the car. And I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about that. I have a right to know who is on my property.
Well, I’m not poor, and to have some storage area above the garage, so I guess that fits into your theory, but I park both our cars in the garage. I live in an area that has terrible weather in the winter and I would never park my car outside during the winter. That habit carries on in two other seasons. Also it’s nice to have a cool car to get into during the summer, but not a necessity. When I was poor, I didn’t have a garage, we parked our car out on the street due to necessity and it got hit by a drunk driver. I would never park my car on the street if it wasn’t a necessity.
On the other hand I know people in my neighborhood with the exact same housing and more or less the same social class that pack their garages to the brim and don’t park that car is in there. I wouldn’t say they were poor, I might say they had too much stuff. When we have too much junk we get a dumpster and toss it. We do that every couple of years.
Three car garage, three cars usually in it. Plus snowblower, lawn mower, tool bench, etc. When my youngest is home from college, their car goes on the side of the house next to the garage.
Its Minnesota. The garage is attached. Parking in the garage means you don’t have to scrape in the Winter. You are warmer and drier than if you park in the driveway. That means that you can’t fill your garage with crap, you’ll need that space in the Winter for your car.
Whenever we buy a new house or rent, we always look for houses with garages, and we make sure that we can park in said garage within a month or so of moving in. My current garage is a bit small- we can both get into my vehicle easily, but (thanks to some poorly-placed shelves) the passenger can only get into my wife’s car once it’s pulled out.
I’m living in Edmonton, AB… where it gets really freakin’ cold in the winter. I’m surprised at how many houses here that don’t have garages. And the garages that most houses have, here, are DETACHED garages that you have to go through the back yard to get to. I can’t imagine that’s much fun at all in the snow, and apparently the alleys only get plowed once a winter.
Here’s something else I’ve noticed in my neighborhood, that I don’t think has been mentioned. A relatively few homeowners seem to set their garages up as rec rooms - w/ TVs and seating. There is one a block or so away, where they seem to use it to watch football games. I get the impression that the viewers smoke cigars there - which may not be allowed in the house. Maybe they’ll have bags set up in the driveway. Another one in the other direction appears to be an older couple. The old man will just be sitting in his garage with the overhead door open, in a recliner watching TV, while his wife does some sewing on a sewing machine.
(And, in case you think us overly nosey, we notice these when we walk our dog.)