Survey Time!

So, okay, we live in a student-dense (and sometimes a dense student) neighborhood.
Parking is always tight here, though the past week hasn’t been particularly bad, and there have been a lot of empty spaces on the block.
A fairly new, really BIG Nissan SUV blocked part of our driveway Monday night.
The back of his car was about two feet into the actual driveway, leaving maybe six feet of open space.
If Berkeley ever bothered to red-paint the driveway entrances on our block, I’d guess the SUV would have been parked about a third of it in the red.
As it was, when I came home I could get into the driveway, but it was a bit nerve-wracking fitting between the end of his car and the perfectly-legally parked car on the other side.

This morning the jerk was back, this time parked a good three feet into the driveway, so that I actually had to back out over the curb on the other side.
If a car had been parked on that side I’d have been trapped in the driveway, and when I came back I parked in the street so I could be sure I could leave later.
Since I was bringing home heavy groceries parking on the street did make me crabby.
I admit to crabbiness.

Tom and I have differing views on the subject.

Tom thinks that at this point the appropriate reaction is that I should leave a note on the car asking that teh driver not block our driveway again.
He worries that there could be retribution if the driver is ticketed and/or towed, or at, the least, bad feelings.
And, basically, he is a nicer guy than I am, and feels bad about causing the unknown driver to have to pay a ticket.

Me, I think the driver can perfectly easily see that the SUV is blocking the driveway.
Furthermore, he’s been blocking it all day today, and he did so all day Monday and on through to Tuesday afternoon, and so clearly there isn’t much concern for other people at work here.
Now, between the two of us, we have been to the emergency room easily half a dozen times in the past year, three times in what the doctors termed “potentially lethal” situations, so I do not take kindly to anything that interferes with me getting my car out when I need it.
(Or, in one of those cases, an ambulance into the driveway!)
Today, I parked on the street because Tom cannot physically walk the half-mile from campus, and I can’t gamble that no one will park on the other side of my driveway, trapping my car when I need to go pick him.
I think I’m being perfectly nice – indeed beyond the call of normal niceness! – parking my car out on the street and only having the idiot driver of the SUV ticketed.
The city would tow the SUV at this point, if I requested it, and in that case I could use my driveway.
Which I can’t now.

Note: our street is regularly patrolled for parking, since we have non-resident two-hour limits on parking, and ticketing the unwary is a city money-cow.
The usual meter person here will also occasionally ticket blocked driveways, if she decides to, but mostly she won’t unless someone calls.
I mean, the neighborhood idiot who got himself into a screaming fit with her did find himself being ticketed for blocking his own driveway after that, but he’s a special case.

Me, I think rich college kid idiots are not necessarily really well-informed on how tickets happen in residential areas in Berkeley.
I doubt that he will assume that the owner of the driveway caused law enforcement to catch him in his illegal parking.
I think he will just figure he got caught pushing the limits this time, and maybe he should be more careful in the future since he will have learned that they actually do ticket around here if you park badly.
I think putting a note on the car, though, would call his attention to our actual existence, making any future need to have him ticketed more fraught with possibilities of retribution.

Sooooooo…
Am I a meanie for having him ticketed? (Remember, I didn’t have the vehicle towed. At least not this time.)
Does it seem that he would necessarily blame the driveway residents for having been ticketed?
Remember, he is an undergraduate in possession of a pricy vehicle; i.e., this isn’t a question of wether you yourself understand the system, but whether you think that the idiot SUV driver does.