More than half (5.7m) of the UK’s estimated 11m garages are not used to park cars… mostly because they’re too full of household junk, according to the RAC.
Fifty-three per cent of drivers with garages claim never to put their cars in them, with just four-in-10 (40%) doing so on a regular basis and 8% occasionally.
Instead, 70% say they leave their vehicles on the drive and two-fifths (18%) on the street, with the remainder using private or public car parks.
By far and away the number-one reason for failing to use garages for the purpose they were intended is that they have too many other items stored in them – a fact that 68% of drivers with garages admitted to.
Among the items most commonly kept in UK garages are DIY tools and materials (90%), gardening tools and garden furniture (74%), push bikes and scooters (55%), welly boots and shoes (36%) and camping equipment (24%).
The second most popular reason for not parking in the garage – cited by four-in-10 drivers (39%) in the RAC study – was that there’s not enough room to comfortably get in and out of the car due to the limited size of the garage itself.
The situation is a bit more serious for nearly a quarter (23%) as they say there’s not even enough space to open the car doors when it’s parked in the garage. And, perhaps strangest of all, three-in-10 (30%) claim their cars are just too big to even get through the garage door in the first place – potentially due to the increased size of some modern cars such as SUVs which have grown considerably in popularity in recent years.
The steady has implications for motorists who tell insurers they garage their vehicles but then have a claim for damage or theft, which would not be paid out and could leave a black mark on their insurance record for falsifying a policy document.
