No argument there. I’m in a passive solar house.
This is very similar to my parents’ neighborhood, built in the 1960s. My parents and their next-door neighbors both have the downsloping driveways. In front of the garage is a bit of a low point and there is a slight slope from the inside to outside corner, so that the water from the driverway runs to the outside corner where there is a storm drain. In over 50 years, they have rarely had any water come into the garage, but they normally have only about 2-3 inches of rain within a 24-hour period. If there’s significant snowfall, my dad will clean the snow from the channel.
The neighborhood actually has a problem on the street, because the storm drain at the low point at the bottom of the big hill (the one which is used for sledding) will get blocked and then there will be a pond at the bottom of the hill. This is part of the fun when a creek is buried.
The creek actually runs along the back of my parents property, and they have sometimes has some standing water when there’s a lot of rain, but this is infrequent. As it is in the garden, it doesn’t bother the house.
Given that morons trying to drive on hills in icy conditions is going to happen anyway, they probably want to prohibit out-of-control cars careening into whatever pedestrians and other vehices are on the sidewalk and in the street, rather than into the moron’s own garage door, given the choice between the two.
My house, and a number of similar houses built in the neighbourhood by the same developer back in the 60s, has a half-sunken garage and reverse slope driveway. Its a “high ranch” where the main floor is about 5’ above grade, the basement has normal height windows and is only half below ground, and the garage takes up part of the basement. The front door is at ground level with steps up to the main level and down to the basement.
There is a full width grating, connected to the storm sewer, at the bottom of the drive to deal with rain, which has handled even torrential downpours without letting water into the garage. Snow is a bit of a bother (I’m in Canada) as I have to toss it a few feet higher at the low end, and the drain freezes up over the winter, but a couple of buckets of hot water deals with that if we get a mid-winter thaw.
Actually keeping it shovelled and occasional use of ice melter handles any possible icy conditions.
We did have to have the retaining walls rebuilt a few years ago, as they were starting to shift after half a century.
This was my thought. As mentioned above, most sloped driveways I’ve seen there’s a grate the full width of the driveway in front of the garage door. (most houses I’ve seen have sump pumps anyway.) The biggest problem I could think would be freezing rain and such creating a slippery slope. I know Toronto area has a lot of underground parking for apartment buildings and for those, the exposed entry ramp has embedded heating for this reason - but all-winter heating for one family in a private dwelling could get expensive.
I think this basement garage is less popular for a number of reasons. to avoid too strong a slope, this forces the main floor to be unacceptably high up. There are also problems with sealing the garage from the house, to prevent CO2 penetration in the house and to properly insulate the house from the unheated garage. ( Holmes on Homes tackled a number such problematic “room over garage” issues). Also, a place where gasoline is kept - in cars or cans - is a fire risk, so the more separated the better.
The alternative, much more popular in newer subdivisions, is “turtle houses”. Rather than create a back lane and detached garages, the garages at ground level stick out from the front of the house. However, this means less front wall for the dwelling. A smaller living room window beside the entrance door is set far back from the garage front - hence the “turtle” nickname. The street appears to be nothing but a row of garage door fronts. Worse, some homes take advantage of the garage structure to put either a bedroom or a “bonus room”, a sort of upstairs rec room, over top the garage, thus negating the point of separating out the garage structure and resulting in the same sealing and insulation issues.
Random Turtle house road
I lived in a house for a couple of years as a child that had a downslope driveway. There was a full width grate in front with a drainage pipe running under the garage and down to a creek that ran through our yard behind the house. It was a common split level house with narrow road frontage but plenty of property behind the house. If they had built up the land to build the house on there would be a steep drop behind the house so a split level made more sense.