My WAG is for parking enforcement or law enforcement purposes. If you park by backing in to a space your license plate isn’t visible (unless you live in a state with both front and rear license plates, of course). That would make it harder to check cars" license plates if you were doing it for some reason. Of course, many HOA rules are purely about control and aesthetics, so I’d lean in that direction in your case.
My hubby (and most people I know) calls parking by backing in to a space “combat parking”, and he prefers it. (This is probably related to him being retired military.) I am terrible at backing, and will always choose a “pull through spot” if one is available so I don’t have to back out to park or to leave, either. So that’s how I refer to the two different definitions you give for “granny parking”.
Well I’ve never called it “combat parking” but I always back in and that term works for me.
We’ve had thread discussions here about backing in vs. pulling in. Some of it got heated, IIRC.
I’m yet another who’s never heard the term granny parking. I grew up in Upstate NY and New England, spent a couple of years in the midwest (W Lafayette IN), and have been living in / near San Francisco for decades. And, like some others here, I would’ve guessed slow or hesitant parking.
I believe it is easier regardless of how long the vehicle is. For forklifts, and it is critical for them to approach their load straight, their steering wheels are in the rear. So in a sense, every time they’re pulling in it’s the same as a car’s backing in.
Back-in parking is safer than nose-in because when you approach the parking space, before backing in you can see that the space is completely clear. But when nosed in, when you’re leaving and backing out you don’t have full visibility of the lane and any cross traffic.
One might be this and it happened to me. When I pulled through and had stopped in the forward space, I saw someone who had just spotted that space and was about to pull into it.
Completely wrong. It takes a few seconds longer to back in, but it ensures that I don’t run you or your kids over when I try to back out with my sight lines completely blocked by SUV’s on either side. If you want to call that jerkish, then I don’t know what to say.
And you know all those newspaper reports you read of people backing over their own toddlers in the driveway? Well maybe if they’d been more jerkish and held up traffic for a moment while they backed in, you wouldn’t be reading about it.
Heck, I thought that we might be talking about “parking” Grandma in a “rest home”.
I also vote never heard of it. I do both forms as often as is practicable. My uncle taught me to do this decades ago. It has come in handy a time or two.
I disagree. The backing is no safer if you are doing it before or after your visit. Rear cameras eliminate most of that anyway. Since you have to drive past the spot, stop and then back up it will cause confusion to anyone behind you. Then they might not only have to stop and wait, they might have to back up because they didn’t know what you were going to do. Now you have at least two toddler killers going backwards.
For me it’s “what Russ called backing in for a quick getaway”. Russ was a guy from high school. I always give him credit for the term even though I haven’t seen him since high school.
It is? In what places? I’ve always backed into spaces, I live in a place (UK) where our parking spaces are smaller, parallel parking is a daily occurrence and diagonal parking is extremely rare. Backing in is vastly better in smaller spaces. So much so that it’s part of the driving test.
Not when it’s standard practise. Where I live, if I see a car signal to park (parallel or otherwise) then I anticipate that they will pull past the parking spot in order to back in. Because it is what everyone does.
No, because I have just driven the area in front of the slot I’ll be backing into, I’ve gotten a full view of what’s surrounding me. But when I’m backing out of a space, my visibility is severely limited as to what’s on either side of the SUV’s surrounding me.
This. I use my signal and pull up next to the space, then finish the maneuver. No one seems confused by it.
I’d guess that one or both of the cars in front and back of the driver had parked there after the car shown getting out of the space had parked – in other words, that the driver shown getting out had parked in what was at the time a larger available space.
I disagree with your disagreement. When you back into the spot, you have very clear and current visibility of the entire area, as you’re not hemmed in by other cars. You’re traveling with limited visibility into an area with no traffic.
When you back out, you have terrible visibility of oncoming traffic, you have been inside your car with poor visibility long enough for unseen cars and pedestrians to fill the area behind you.
Other cars acting stupid is a problem, but it is equally as bad when you’re backing out, and they’re likely to be moving faster.
Yep, I definitely heard it discouraged regularly, enough so that I do not back in. People do it here all the time, but I don’t like wasting the time of people behind me to back into a space that I’ve been taught is supposed to be pulled in forwards to. There are cases, I guess, where you’re asked to back in, but where I park, that’s never been stipulated. I pull in nose-first 95% of the time. I do think, though, that backing in is overall safer, provided you’re good at backing in.
I’ve never heard it called “granny parking” and that seems to be a weird term used to describe it, as it’s not something I’d associate with grannies. (It’s a little trickier than pulling in front first.) I’ve never had any issue backing out of a space, nor felt uncomfortable about it. And, these days, your cars have sensors all over the place to tell you where everything is, so you don’t even have to cringe your neck all that much. From what I can google, it is supposedly illegal in Indiana to back-in, but the reasons are so the cops can read your plates (no front license laws in Indiana.)
Yes, for tight spaces with not a lot of wiggle room in the lane you’re turning from, backing in will help you navigate that space, as you can turn more sharply. That’s probably the 5% of time I use it, but here in the US, you usually have a lot of room to work with it (minus some claustrophobic parking garages.)
I would tend to disagree, because backing out in a busy lot can also be a hassle. You can’t see that well, so it’s like back out, make someone stop, get honked at, pull in, lather, rinse, repeat. And of course there’s the elevated chance that you’ll hit someone or they’ll hit you.
Of course some lots are so tight that anyone would have trouble backing in, so there are a lot of ins and outs to that one.