Yep. If you have access to a vehicle, go out and practice, practice, practice. There is no excuse not to. Nothing stopping you from having an hour with your old driving instructor. When I passed my test 27 years ago (Jesus) we didn't have to parallel park for a test. It was only after when I was making a balls up out side my girlfriends house at the time, her dad came out and took the p***. When I told him I had never been taught, he jumped in, showed me once (what I was doing is not going far enough past the gap) and then I spent the next day or two practicing. Its a doddle. I hated driving in the snow, when it snowed I went out and practiced. Still not my favourite pastime but it doesn't bother me anymore. This was in rear wheeled drive cars too. My stepsons hated sitting with me when they were learning because everything they hated doing I made them do even more, driving a crap road, busy roundabout, parking ina tight gap, but a long time after they have passed their test they both thanked me, as they don't think twice about stuff now. No hiding when you are driving a car. Incompetance can kill someone.
cos they're never confusing? And to bring us back home to blighty, who the #*!k decided these things were a sensible use of public funds. anyway, back to topic. the image below bugs me about parking. I have no issue with the sideways thing if the bays are wide enough for it but I hate it when people do it on narrow roads when the bays simply aren't wide enough for it not to stick out into the flow of traffic. (image from a news article where they were (IMO) rightly given a ticket.
There is one of these guys on my street - baring in mind the parking bays on either side of the road are barely wider than my corsa B, and if I'm more than a few inches from the curb I'm at least on the line - and this joker parks his smart car like that! half hanging out into the road - what's worse, is he does it right in front of people, I got pretty much stuck behind him the other day as he parked in front of me at right angles, and I had about 2 inches behind and 1 inch in front, and I had to shimmy back and forth about a million times to be able to get out due to the extra turning I had to do to get past the smart car. My street is bad for parking - moving to a nicer area means lots of much wider cars that all laugh in the face of the narrow parking bays, range rovers, porsche grande tourers, they are all there, mocking skinny cars and making a nuisance of the streets.
Correct! Only the very left light is of importance. Allthough I imagine they would make for great driving tests: Just cross them once and back, park the car and you are done! There can't be any worse on your roads, can there? Sorry.
I've no idea why people don't reverse park, it's so much easier Not only due to the mathematics of the situation, but it means you start your next journey going forward with much better visibility.
Problem with the Smarts is, the first generation was just a tad shorter, and parking in a right angle was actually allowed (at least here in Germany). The newer generations (not the 2014 update, the one before) is too long to be allowed to park this way, and isn't....officially. Now how to get the couple of years knowledge "smarts are allowed to do this" out of the heads? But we can't expect a poor little ticket-warden to differentiate Smarts by build-year, can we?
Oh...If I ever land on that roundabout with my mobile-home, I hope you folk will simply get out of the way. Driving oin the wrong side of the road is confusing enough without the possibility to circle around a roundabout the right way in the wrong lane.
I actually can think of one reason. Multi-Story car parks and you're doing the Saturday shop. A lot of the multi-story car parks around here don't always have enough room for you to reverse park and access the boot. Still, not very often
How small are those spaces! I've never had that problem and I drive a Nissan elgrand (about 5m long) when I need more than 2 seats.
It might be because of the multi-stories around me tbh. There's only one (proper one anyway) in Lichfield, and it was built in the 70's or there abouts. Tiny spaces, tiny tiny spaces. That said, the NCP ones in Birmingham city centre aren't much better.
I know your pain driving a 9-3 estate so narrow and usually too short. You have to go front first so you can open the boot. But then that makes the reverse out a nightmare because, A: Your cars so long you have to back out a few feet before you can see the oncoming traffic and B: The length of the car is usually close to the width of the road your reversing out onto so if some irk has parked to far forward in the bay you end up doing a 5000 point turn or having to go the wrong way. Oh incidentally, whole carpark at work is on a slope. Honda Jazz rolled out its bay has glanced the side of a focus and rolled into a hedge. Usually get something like this at least once a month here. Theres a life lesson here. park in the bays which are higher up so cars cant roll into you, and always leave it in gear!
