Our driveway is "shared," which we don't really like, but we have found ourselves in this situation. We have four neighbors that have a key to our driveway gate at the street. Two of those have houses behind ours that have no driveway, so they can only access their houses by walking. So we gave them permission to use our driveway temporarily if they have deliveries or visitors, which allows them to get about halfway to their houses. The other two neighbors actually have property bordering the road, but they don't want to put in their own driveways. They prefer to use ours, which we think is weird. But we wanted to be friendly, so we gave them a key, too.
The current driveway trouble actually has to do with one of these road-access-owning neighbors. He has frequently blocked our driveway, or has left the gate open, or has taken our padlock into his house repeatedly over the past six years. Heather (Erica) finally solved the missing padlock problem by wiring a chain from the padlock to the gate! We also recently reminded this neighbor that he only has permission to pass through our driveway and must leave the gate closed and locked, or we will change the lock and not give him a key. Since then he has been much better. Fortunately, the other three neighbors use the gate appropriately and usually even ask our permission first.
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| Padlock chained to gate |