17 August 2002: The RAC wants local authorities to free up more parking spaces in residential areas by ‘reviewing obsolete yellow lines’, to help deal with an increasing problem of ‘parking rage’.

"As more people turn to the car as their main form of transport, increased car numbers mean increased competition for secure car parking spaces,” says Robert Taylor, Managing Director, RAC Ireland. “Together with the increase in urban development there are now more feuds over parking than there had been with your typical house in years gone by.

"In recent times, parking rage, due to limited parking has become a main source of dispute amongst neighbours. Even more so with the introduction of parking permits for residents, and pay and display for non-residents, as permit holders are still not guaranteed a parking space on their own street."

RAC research indicates that competition for parking spaces has become the number one provocation for neighbour-to-neighbour feuds. "The rise in congestion has meant that motorists are spending more time in their cars than ever before, says Edumund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation. “The car has become an extension of an individual's home, and the principle that a man's home is his castle now extends to the parking space directly outside his home."