Strange car in your driveway - what do you do?

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

@Beckdawrek

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.

Nicely phrased.

[EdelweissPirate]

@rbroome

I to am baffled by the “don’t call 911” crowd. Around here calling 911 gets you a dispatch person who then decides who to contact. May be police, fire, ambulance, other. You don’t get chewed out calling 911, you get chewed out calling them every 15 minutes about how awful your relatives in another state are.

If you need prompt help, call 911. Let them sort it out. Just don’t abuse the service.

Honestly, since this varies tremendously depending on your region, it seems parochial to chew out someone who called 911 in good faith. I get that resources are limited, but they’re limited in different ways in different places.

I try not to call 911 unless it’s truly an emergency, but I’ve called various police non-emergency numbers with wildly varying results. Even during business hours, that sometimes dumps me to voicemail. I get that being a 911 operator is very stressful and that people call for dumb reasons, but it’s unreasonable to expect people to parse each jurisdiction’s policies prior to calling.

I see this with the TSA sometimes. For a while, they were intentionally making the rules slightly different at different airports just to keep the bad guys on their toes. I was told a few times—in an exasperated, patronizing tone of voice—that I didn’t need to put my iPad in the bin.

Oh, really, Mr. Phoenix TSA guy?!? Well, your colleague in Chicago nearly tackled me for failing to do exactly that.

My point is that some people get attached to the rules for their site and believe them to be self-evident, while in fact they’re just local rules and they’re different from the rules other places have. TSA agents often seem not to understand that, and I suspect some 911 operators struggle with the concept as well.

[jasg]

Strip it for parts…

[Peter_Morris]

@Morgyn

What’s ASAIR?

Probably a typo for AFAIR, As Far As I Recall/ Remember. Possibly conflating with ISTR, I Seem To Recall.

[kopek]

@EdelweissPirate

Honestly, since this varies tremendously depending on your region, it seems parochial to chew out someone who called 911 in good faith. I get that resources are limited, but they’re limited in different ways in different places.

I try not to call 911 unless it’s truly an emergency, but I’ve called various police non-emergency numbers with wildly varying results. Even during business hours, that sometimes dumps me to voicemail. I get that being a 911 operator is very stressful and that people call for dumb reasons, but it’s unreasonable to expect people to parse each jurisdiction’s policies prior to calling.

This may have changed since we went “regional” and not just for the city but ----- what the police and others here always stressed was that if you needed an officer call 911. Traffic accident; 911. Dead body across your porch; 911. Loud party next door; 911. At one point all the local direct-to-the-precinct numbers were disconnected although I think new ones may have been added lately. Put me in another city and for mundane things I may ask a local for advice and/or an opinion first but I am still pretty likely to go 911.

[MacTech]

Same answer as many others here, call the police non-emergency lines and get it towed

I don’t care about how it would “inconvenience” the driver, don’t want to be towed? then don’t park in my bloody driveway, simple, really.

[Mundane_Super_Hero]

Might be people visiting neighbors (file it under “guests who have no manners”). I mean it could be a stolen car that was abandoned which technically could mean that they are looking to steal a neighbors car to keep going wherever they are going. Technically, it could be the driver who is waiting while some other people rob a house.

The problem is, if you call the cops and you are wrong, you’re instantly branded “The Neighborhood Karen” and there’s a good chance you’ll end up on Youtube.

I guess I’ll know when it happens to me.