Came home today to find an Orkin pest control truck in my assigned parking space. I was kinda pissed, although I get that tradesmen need a place to park and usually when I drive off I’m gone for 9 hours and not just 2 like I was this morning so I could see a neighbor assuming I’d never know. But really, they SHOULD have told the Orkin guy this when he pulled up. People are often just plain lazy about this stuff (until it’s THEIR spot taken!).
Fortunately, the visitor spaces were open.
I left a note on the windshield asking that they place park in a visitor spot next time, m’kay? Thx.
Did not call police, the landlord, or a tow, but I was still a little pissed off. At least I could still park next to the building.
“Your honor, I swear it wasn’t Nastassja Kinski in the Porsche I passed on that road (it looked like Malcolm McDowell in point of fact).”
“Case dismissed.”
I am not a lawyer, but I believe in most municipalities a parked car blocking a driveway is illegally parked and can be towed for that reason. When I used to live a block from a college, I’d wake up to a car blocking my driveway every few months. Since every other inch of curb was already occupied by other parked cars, I couldn’t drive around it and off the curb to leave for work. I was stuck. So I would call the city to tow it away as I made breakfast.
There are some other methods of preventing an unlawfully parked vehicle from being freely driven away. One is basically a large board suction-cupped to the windshield so the driver can’t see out. It’s an ingenious invention, really. They call it a Barnacle.
Similarly, bands of young vigilantes have been enforcing sidewalk driving laws on an ad hoc basis. If a driver they encounter objects too much, they get the sticker.
Another uses a tow truck to move a heavy object behind a car that can’t pull forward. One I saw was a drum that had been filled with concrete and had a lifting eye sunk into the top. Put that against the bumper and the car isn’t going anywhere.