A driveway is blocked in the Wychwood neighbourhood of Toronto.Chittley, Jordan/The Globe and Mail
In October, 2022, emergency responders in Las Vegas received a call from a 34-year-old driver saying he’d been shot because a neighbour had accused him of partially blocking a driveway. He died and the neighbour, Robert Salone, was charged with murder. Earlier this year, The Detroit News reported that a jury convicted Winston Kirtley Jr. of fatally shooting two people and wounding six others in a 2022 argument that began over a vehicle blocking his driveway. Kirtley asked his victims to move their vehicle three times, he testified, but they did not, answering only “What?” So, Kirtley got his assault-style rifle and shot them 19 times.
People don’t like it when you block their driveways.
That’s probably because it is illegal to block a driveway in virtually every Canadian municipality. For instance, in Toronto the municipal code states drivers may not park “In front of or within 60 centimetres of a driveway or laneway or so as to obstruct vehicles in the use of a driveway or laneway.”
That does not stop them. Driveway blocking, driveway encroachment, the hinderance of residential driveway ingress and egress - call it what you like - is one of the most common driving transgressions. That means there are a lot of unhappy people out there. It happens so frequently on my street in Toronto that four neighbours have posted “Do Not Block Driveway” signs.
Not all driveway blocks are the same. They come in varying degrees of intensity and duration, but the sentiment behind them is always the same. If you live near a school, for instance, then your driveway is probably blocked during both the morning drop off and afternoon pick up. The parents whose cars stick three feet across the lip of your driveway will not think they are doing anything wrong as they aren’t really “parking,” they are just leaving their automobiles in a stationary position for between 20 and 45 minutes. Real parking is when you leave it overnight.
That’s the essence of driveway blocking. It combines entitlement (“I can block your driveway if I want”) with casual disregard (“You’re not using it anyway”). The attitude is, “I can’t find anywhere convenient to park, so now it’s your problem.”
I now have a shared driveway, but for years I was the consummate street parker. I could parallel park into the tiniest of spots. Parking can be a bleak and frustrating affair. I admit to coming as close to encroaching over the lip of the driveway as possible, and once getting called out by a passive-aggressive note, but I never knowingly blocked a driveway.
Certain professions lend themselves to driveway blocking – those who work in residential construction, yard maintenance or any other such professions seem predisposed. Over the summer there was a lot of renovation happening on my street. Every day, some tradesman, construction worker, roofer, ad hoc genre blocked my driveway. Not just a little. They’d sometimes park their pickup truck or van across the entire entrance.
I’d have to walk across the street and ask them to move. I’d remind them that the flat asphalt thing between the houses is a “driveway.” No matter how many times they were called out, they always seem puzzled, as if it never occurred to them that the owner of said way might want to use it to, well, you know, drive. I should not be too critical. I am sure their work was so pressing that they couldn’t park 40 feet down the street where there was space. Even if they have heavy tools or materials to unload, I don’t understand why they can’t unload them and then move the vehicle and park it down the street.
Nuanced driveway blockers approach it as a game of inches. They have a pre-determined number in their minds. They use this to negotiate the moral turpitude. For example, they’ll allow their SUV to encroach across your driveway by two feet, but not three. As a result, you must pivot around the front of their car, sometimes narrowly missing another car or tree and likely driving off a curb.
What can be done? Not much. You can report the offenders to the parking enforcement, and they’ll get to it as soon as they can, which means a long time.
You can not call a private company to have it towed. That is considered theft.
In November, 2023, a Brit found a unique non-assault-style-rifle way of correcting a driveway blocker. He “cheesed” the car, covering it in processed cheese slices. Redditt user jbl7561 posted, “Block me in, I’ll cheese your car … This was the last thing I needed last night when trying to leave home. I’m hoping I’ve sent a clear but harmless message.”
Finally, a reason to buy processed cheese slices.