A driveway is a type of private road

Private road

A private road is a road owned and maintained by a private individual, organization, or company rather than by a government.Consequently, unauthorized use of the road may be considered trespassing, and some of the usual rules of the road may not apply...

 for local access to one or a small group of structures, and is owned and maintained by an individual or group.

Driveways rarely have traffic lights, but some that bear heavy traffic, especially those leading to commercial businesses and parks, do.

Driveways may be decorative in ways that public roads cannot, because of their lighter traffic and the willingness of owners to invest in their construction. Driveways are not resurfaced, snow blown or otherwise maintained by governments. They are generally designed to conform to the architecture of connected houses or other buildings.

Materials used for driveways include concrete, decorative brick, cobblestone, asphalt, and decomposed granite, surrounded with grass or other ground-cover plants.

Driveways are commonly used as paths to private garages

Garage (house)

A residential garage is part of a home, or an associated building, designed or used for storing a vehicle or vehicles. In some places the term is used synonymously with "carport", though that term normally describes a structure that is not completely enclosed.- British residential garages:Those...

, carport

Carport

A carport is a covered structure used to offer limited protection to vehicles, primarily cars, from the elements. The structure can either be free standing or attached to a wall. Unlike most structures a carport does not have four walls, and usually has one or two...

s, or houses. On large estates, a driveway may be the road that leads to the house from the public road, possibly with a gate in between. Some driveways divide to serve different homeowners. A driveway may also refer to a small apron of pavement in front of a garage with a curb cut in the sidewalk, sometimes too short to accommodate a car.

Often, either by choice or to conform with local regulations, cars are parked in driveways in order to leave streets clear for traffic. Moreover, some jurisdictions prohibit parking or leave standing any motor vehicle upon any residential lawn area (defined as the property from the front of a residential house, condominium, or cooperative to the street line other than a driveway, walkway, concrete or blacktopped surface parking space). Other examples, include the city of Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

 that forbids "any person to park or leave standing, or cause to be parked or left standing any vehicle upon any public street in the City for seventy-two or more consecutive hours." Other areas may prohibit leaving vehicles on residential streets from 2 am to 6 am, necessitating the use of driveways.

Residential driveways are also used for such things as garage sale

Garage sale

A garage sale, also known as a yard sale, rummage sale, tag sale, lawn sale, attic sale, moving sale, or junk sale, is an informal, irregularly scheduled event for the sale of used goods by private individuals, in which "block sales" are allowed, so that sellers are not required to obtain business...

s, automobile washing and repair, and recreation, notably (in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

) for basketball practice.

Another form of drive is a 'Run-Up'. A short piece of land used usually at the front of the property to park a vehicle on.
Run-ups are made from a number of different materials including brick paving, concrete and gravel.