Oh, I’m so sorry. I had no idea that a little hyperbolic snark was policed so closely here.
I have done that, and I won’t have a problem doing it again. We live in a cul-de-sac close to a freeway offramp. Stolen cars have gotten dumped in front of our house. We had a rash of residential burglaries a few years ago, and some guy was caught hopping fences down the street to get to his car on another cul-de-sac while breaking into houses. Park in front of my house with no obvious reason? I’m going to notice. Stay there for hours, especially if you don’t get out of the car? I may call for a deputy to do a drive-by. Sitting in a car for hours in a neighborhood where you have no obvious business is suspicious enough to me.
No obvious business? What could you possibly know about someone’s business? Just curious, do you think this is what criminals do? Sit in the open in front of their intended target for several hours?
Sitting in a parked car for hours is suspicious to me. Not inexplicable, I can think of a few good reasons, but none of them are obvious. Parking in front of my house when there are others parking and people are bringing wrapped gifts to a neighbor’s place? No problem, a couple of our neighbors have a lot of parties. Park in front of my house, get out carrying a clipboard and wearing an ID badge of some sort? Happens frequently, given we’re close to the freeway and a logical starting point for door-to-door soliciting. Park in front of my house and stay in the car for hours? That’s just damned unusual.
I don’t know what criminals do. I’m not a criminal, and don’t think I know any. But somebody sitting in a car for hours parked in front of my house has no obvious business there. It’s in the words themselves. Obvious. I can’t see why they’d be there.
I guess I have to chalk this up to there being all kinds of people in the world. It would never occur to me to call the cops to report a non-crime, just because my mind can come up with POSSIBLE scenarios where someone might, at sometime undetermined in the future, possibly, maybe commit a crime. I’m pretty sure that if I was parked somewhere legally, minding my own business and watching my phone or taking a brief rest and I learned that a neighbor had called the police on me, that would be my new hangout spot until the end of time.
This is what @wolfpup said:
This is what I said:
This is what you said:
Twist and interpret as you think necesary to fit your narrative, but we’re not talking about the same thing. I think you realize it. Even if you don’t, I’m done.
What on earth are you even on about? Wolfpup’s example was a guy TAKING A REST.
Sitting in your car is taking a rest. Apparently, that’s terrifying to certain people. Completely, totally bizarre to me.
You frequently sleep for hours in front of a strangers house? Now that’s bizarre.
Interesting. Where did I say that?
This might very well be the dumbest discussion I’ve ever been in. Apparently I’m weird and wrong for not treating mundane situations as a terrifying event that needs to involve law enforcement. So noted.
There was a period of time when the neighbor’s girlfriend would sleep in her car in front of his house, generally in daylight hours.
This was weird but not ominous, especially once we noticed the pattern.
I get that. But I have done it a couple of times in very specific circumstances. Specifically I was working full time on a graveyard shift, while going to college part-time and I had a bizarre schedule one semester where I would get off work at 7 a.m., drive to an 8 a.m. class (at an urban commuter school), get out and then have a few hours to kill until an afternoon class. Usually I’d grab a bite to eat and then take a couple hour nap in my car. I preferred a nice shaded park, but there where a couple of occasions where that proved impossible and I was forced to park across the street from the park in front of a row of homes. Again, this was a big city neighborhood where single-family homes were on very small lots separated from each other by just a few feet and people were mostly less territorial than the suburbs.
The last person we found asleep on our road was out of his car on the dirt.
The car being in a ditch, askew with a broken tire rim.
We kinda thought he was dead or nearly so.
Nope, just passed out from some illicit drug. He was carted off by the county deputy.
We’ve had many other incidents like this. Never a nice person needing a nap.
How long did you let him lie in the ditch, minding his own business?
I think some of us drove by about 3 times before we decided he weren’t ok.
The funny ones are the lovers. They do leave quick, there’s that.
Seems to me that one’s attitude to calling the cops for semi-suspicious circumstances depends a lot on whether the cops in your jurisdiction are professional public servants or violent thugs.
The streets in my neighborhood barely accommodate 2 lanes for traffic. Any car parked on the street, for very long, is a nuisance.
The parked car is at risk of getting hit as people back out of driveways and turn sharply onto the street.
Thankfully, it’s rarely a problem. People don’t park on the street. Except the mowing services. They have a truck and trailer to haul their riding mowers. They’re gone in a hour or two.
I’m amazed that more street-parked cars here don’t get hit or clipped; the one time it’s happened on my street, the kid managed to plow into a car that was pretty much parked in someone’s yard. After being awakened by the wreck at roughly 2 AM the next morning, I volunteered to go talk to the homeowner; it took me several minutes to convince her that the blue Hyundai that was now in pieces in her driveway was the same one that had been so neatly parked in front of her house the previous evening.
I used to live in a big UK city where parking was a massive issue. Paid parking was extortionate and barely available overnight, and the houses were old, often converted to multiple flats, so there could be 4 or more cars with only one or two spaces per house. Public transport was OK during the day, but terrible after around 9 so anyone working in the centre late who didn’t live within walking distance- all the staff at the restaurants and pubs and things- had nowhere to park if they drove in, as the street parking was all 2 hours only and only a couple of hotels had their own spaces [1] Most of them opted for the closest street parking and a 15-20 minute walk.
Basically there were simply too many cars for the space available, especially in the evenings when everyone was there.
The city responded not by improving the public transport or finding an alternative place for people to park at a reasonable rate, but by bringing in a (highly unpopular) resident parking scheme. This was in operation during the day; residents living inside the zone now had to pay for a permit, but had no guarantee of a space while those outside the zone couldn’t get one and couldn’t park there before something like 6pm- or could only park for up to 2 hours and had to pay, depending on the street. Obviously in the places where there were just too many residents with cars, this not only didn’t help, it actually removed some of the existing parking because they blocked some of the spaces off to install the parking meters.
I had the misfortune of living on the first street outside the zone when it was brought in. Parking in my area went from bad to pure chaos. I didn’t live in the permit zone so I couldn’t get a permit, and obviously every single other car without a permit was trying to squeeze in to the same area. I regularly wound up having to park streets and streets away.
I really appreciate having my own offstreet parking and almost no-one parking outside my house nowadays. Not that I care if someone does, it’s normally just the neighbour’s friends and the odd delivery guy taking a break.
I had a friend working in a city centre restaurant- he literally would go and move his car between spaces every 2 hours. I also had to turn down a night shift job because there was no way for me to get home at the time it finished short of wasting half my wages on a taxi every day- a fact they pointed out at interview because so many staff had quit on realising it. It really was a mess ↩︎
I would never be bothered about a thing like that. The only way it would bother me is if it were a derelict car leaking oil or something.
Pretty sure I’ve told you guys before about the insanely restrictive HOA in my Dad’s SC gated community. Not only is street parking against the rules, you have to register a need to park a car in your own driveway. HOA rules say that all cars must be in the garage unless you have registered guests or are working on a short-term project. And then you have to call the gatehouse and let them know or they will tow the car. From. Your. Personal. Driveway.
Those people are b@sh!t crazy.
Overall the obsession with appearances and controlling neighbors has gotten way out of perspective IMHO. There’s no room for characters in a neighborhood anymore. This is why we don’t know our neighbors like we used to - there’s nobody to talk about. 
I don’t disagree, but I gotta admit to having, I dunno, maybe 13% sympathy with the attitude that cars should be put away tidily when not in use? When cars aren’t sitting in the driveway then kids can use the driveway to play basketball or hopscotch, people can work on projects there, etc. When cars aren’t sitting in the street then it’s safer for people to ride bikes or scooters in the street, and so on.
It’s only about 13% sympathy because even as a non-car-owner, I do recognize the reality that a lot of Americans have to rely on a car they have immediate access to at all times. But there’s no question that as a society we’re just too dependent on individual vehicle ownership. We have surrendered SO much of our infrastructure and community to making things more convenient for cars. And a car that’s sitting in the open, unused, is vulnerable to damage and merely an inconvenient obstacle to anyone else using those spaces.
Ngl, I would kind of enjoy now and then walking through a neighborhood where all the cars not in use were put away tidily. But no, I’m not supporting an HOA trying to impose that policy.