Say you wake up at 1 a.m. on a Monday morning, and you notice that there is a strange car parked in your driveway. What do you do?
Happened to us last night, in a pretty quiet upper/middle class suburb of Chicago. We didn’t recognize it as belonging to any of our neighbors. There was no note, and we had received no texts. It was blocked right in the middle of the drive, blocking both sides of our 2-car garage.
Have it towed.
Fine, but don’t expect a Thank You card.
I Googled the legality of having it towed, and you have the right to do so:
I get cars all the time in front of my house that have broken down. Not in my driveway but right out front.
I think I would call the police first to make sure its not a stolen car then wait to see if someone would come back because maybe it broke down but eventually I would get it towed.
Call 911, I guess. Make a note of the license number first and tell the 911 operator.
I’m dying to find out - was it stolen and abandoned in your driveway? Guest of one of your neighbors who parked at the wrong house? Alien spacecraft disguised to blend in?
Regards,
Shodan
We are the last of three homes on a private lane. It’s never happened, but I guess I’d calm down the dogs, then call the police.
Ding ding ding - we have a winner!
At first, we didn’t know what to do. We called the cops. They ran the plate, and identified it as being from the neighboring town. 2 more cars pulled up. While the cop was here, he said there was a lot of radio activity about the car, and he told us to go inside. Then we heard them say someone saw someone running, and the cops sped off. One came back, and blocked the car in. That cop told us the car was stolen. They suspected someone was checking out potential burglaries in the neighborhood. We mentioned that our neighbor had security cameras (which I’ve complained about here before! :D)
This a.m., the neighbor came to the door. They just got back from being out of town. Their cameras had several images of someone walking around their house. She said they have “2 very expensive cars” in their garage, that they have been trying to sell for a relative. The neighbor suspects the guy might have been trying to steal the cars.
That’s enough excitement for this old couple on our sleepy little street. :eek:
I guess I’ll be making more of an effort to ensure that the doors are locked. :rolleyes:
Oh - and the 11-yr-old golden was as useless as might have been expected. Showed ZERO reaction, even when we had a cop car parked in our driveway for a couple of hrs w/ lights flashing! 
Wow!! Better than TV.
We get ‘lover’s lane’ parkers turning up our well marked driveway. It gets worse in the spring.:).
We installed gate alarms on both entrances. So I get a heads up if anyone turns in. I generally know who might be coming, anyway.
Too bad - I was hoping it was space aliens.
Regards,
Shodan
Apparently the cops texted that they caught a suspect.
The neighbor who is selling the cars said she had told the cops of 2 prospective buyers. She said one impressed her as odd, as the guy said something about shipping the car to Poland. And she had received a text that struck her as odd - along the lies of a fishing e-mail you might get.
I hate to be overly suspicious, but makes me comfortable with my choices to trade-in old cars or sell them to CarMax, and to forgo a lot of on-line resale sites.
Oh yeah - my wife noticed the car around 1 a.m. The neighbor’s cameras caught the guy around 12:30. He might have been next door as we were standing out in our driveway in our PJs. :eek: I wasn’t wearing a shirt, so I can only imagine that he was scared off by my impressively toned physique! 
You’re going to tie up 911 resources for a non-emergency, non life/death situation? Someone else may truly need 911.
How is this not a valid reason to call 911?
Marvin may have been in the trunk (minus most of his head).
Indeed, in my small town at 1 am the only option is to call 911. Local police do not work 24/7, so the call would go over to PA State Police.
It is really weird out here. It seems like every (rare) time we try to call the cops at their non-emergency number, they tell us to call 911.
Just last week, our power went out - the transformer behind our neighbor’s house was hit. We tried to call the power company, but couldn’t figure how to fight thru their phone tree to give them what we thought would be helpful info. So we called the cops non-emerg. They contacted us to 911. 911 was not interested, so long as there weren’t arcing wires, or anyone in imminent danger.
Frustrating.
Finding a strange car parked in your driveway is absolutely worthy of calling 911. It’s a straightforward indication that someone unknown to you has been on your property without your permission, and could very well still be there. When it happened to us, 911 had no problem with our call. (We resolved it before police got there–a group of neighbors figured it out quickly. It’s great to have good neighbors.)
In any case, if you explain the situation to the 911 dispatcher succinctly, they’ll put you in contact to the right department very quickly. I’ve sometimes called the non-emergency police number for various problems, but they don’t always handle calls as well. It hasn’t happened to me, but others have said the non-emergency line has redirected them to 911. It’s how many police departments expect to handle all initial contact. Obviously this depends on locality.
I’d probably wait a few minutes. In the middle of the night the people that stick all those ad/coupon newspapers are out and about and often park in really odd places. I’d also consider the possibility that it’s a pizza delivery person or someone visiting one of my neighbors that overshot an address and decided it was easier to park in my driveway and walk back a house or two. It’s not like it makes a difference at 1am.
After 5 or 10 minutes, I’d probably take a look in it with a flashlight (from a distance at first, to make sure it’s empty) and if it seems safe, approach it and make sure no one is sleeping or passed out.
Eventually, yeah, I’d call the cops and let them figure it out. Even if I wanted to be the nice guy, I’ll have to get my car out at some point.
The city I work in is like that. A few years back we got an alarm call, I told the dispatcher someone would meet the police there soon. She asked me who it would be and what car they’d be driving. I wasn’t sure yet, so I told her I’d call her back when I knew. A few minutes later (this was about 7pm), I called the non-emergency number and got their answering machine. Tried a few more times, same thing. Finally I called 911, knowing it’s the same person that just called me.
She seemed annoyed that I called 911 to get a hold of her and didn’t seem to care when I explained that I didn’t have another option to call her back, which she asked me to do.
On the question of having it towed, would the person calling have to pay for that? Or will a tow company pick up the car and just rely on charging the owner when they come to collect it?
I see those “violators will be towed” signs all the time but I figured the business had some agreement with the tow operator. If some rando calls a tow truck and asks them to haul off a car at the owner’s expense, will they do it?
Interesting story.
For those recommending having the car towed, how would that work? Assuming an innocent reason for the car to be there (which it is almost evey time), how would the owner know where to pick it up? My understanding is that normal tows are required to end at a service station or similar place. Towing and impounding for fees requires highly regulated signage and a contract with the tow company.