My church/school parking lot has annoyingly narrow lanes. I’m a front-first parker, but with the width of the lot, you get a sharper turning radius (from what I can tell) by backing in, plus you can directly see in your mirrors how much room you have on each side which I, as a front-parking parker, have to somewhat guess at. It seems to me if you’re good at it (which I haven’t practiced at all), backing is a bit easier.
I’m a back-in parker. I’m not the problem. In another thread that touched on back-in parking, I posted this about an informal survey I did in a tight Trader Joe’s parking lot where I found, in general, that back-in parkers actually parked faster using fewer gear changes than people who drove straight in. The lot was tight and most cars simply couldn’t pull straight in without repeatedly straightening themselves out. Most back in parkers got in quickly without adjusting (there was an outlier that skewed the data in the end). I didn’t monitor people pulling out of the parking spots but no one doubts that driving straight out is faster and safer.
That’s an interesting article that links to a study that concludes back in parking is safer, but the author can’t concede he’s wrong, so continues to rail on about his petty annoyance and how this is a source of disagreement in America instead of, you know, learning something and changing his opinion.
Interestingly, he observes that many back-in parkers drive “big American work trucks,” which he suggests backs his wife’s theory that back-in parking is some display of masculinity. It isn’t. Front in parking only works when you have a travel lane that is considerably wider than the front-in car is long. Big American work trucks are very long and simply couldn’t get into most parking spaces by driving straight in.
Maryland supposedly has the toughest driving exam in the country. One skill they test on their driving exam is the “reverse two-point turnabout,” which in plain terms is back-in parking. They also recommend back-in parking as safer.
Yep. That reflects what I’ve seen my years of driving in and out of the church/school parking lot I referenced above. Even though I personally don’t do it, my observation is that back-in parking is a better method, just not one I’ve had good opportunity to practice.
I’ve seen it at least once but it was a special case. The lanes were narrow and one-way. The spots were angled acutely to the direction of travel which meant the only way to get in them safely was to pull ahead of the spot and back in. I have also seen front-in only parking in the same type of lots where, in essence, the direction of travel down the lane is the reverse of the above and the only good option is to drive straight in and back out. In both types of lots, it seems plenty of people just drive down the lane in the direction they choose and park however the hell they want.
I don’t see why it’s not okay. I will not back out of my parent’s driveway because it adjoins a 40 mph road where the prevailing speed is 50 mph and 1/3 vehicles is an 18-wheeler. I like to see as clearly as I can before I commit to pulling out, and you won’t get out unless you can clear the road quickly. The options to turn left from their driveway at rush hour are drive straight out or wait 10-20 minutes for a break in traffic sufficient to back out. You better believe I back in from the road. Parking by the side of the road is allowed, so if there is traffic behind me when I’m pulling in, I wait for them to pass before reversing.
This was a 50 mph road, but with good sight lines as I said. Perfectly safe to back out of the driveway with normal caution. What I have a problem with is that this person chose to do this maneuver with someone (me) driving right behind them. Which means I had to stop and sit there on this road while they backed in and out trying to get it right.
A parking lot is one thing. In this situation I think it was pretty inconsiderate.
Yes, as noted in point 2 of my list there is a simple physics issue here about how cars turn.
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It is categorically simpler and quicker to maneuver a turning car backwards than forwards, in any situation whatsoever where turning is called for. This is an inherent property of the fact that cars turn by pivoting the front wheels.
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This extends to “below a certain width of the travel lane - a width which parking lots and two-lane roads often fall below - many stock consumer vehicles sold in the U.S. simply cannot make turns into parking spaces front-in, no matter how skilled the driver is.”
Point 2 may not matter if you drive a smaller car, but understanding it provides some illumination about point 1, which matters to every driver. People who don’t understand point 1 are missing some pretty simple shape-rotation visualization of the kind often seen on IQ tests. Makes one wonder…
God I’m happy I live in the boonies.
Shouldn’t everything work the same in both directions?
I see these in garages where there are pipes or other obstacles running along the garage wall that you’re liable to back into.
Eta: Meant to reply to @Mighty_Mouse
And categorically all people who back in make a complete hash of it, see-sawing back and forth at random angles for a prolonged period of time.
Is your contention that if they attempted to pull in forwards, that they’d do so sideways or upside down? That’s the only way I could see how they’d achieve a decrease in simplicity and quickness from what they’re doing right now.
Listen to Mo Welch:
I used to get really mad at it, I used to honk, but then they like that, they think that’s applause. I used to get so mad, but then I realized: It’s kind of beautiful. Like, I feel like that’s the best part of that guy’s day.
No, this would only be the case if the car pivoted about its exact center by dropping a fifth wheel, or if all four wheels rotated in sync and you could drive sideways. With the front wheels doing all the turning on real cars, you can only “straighten out” the front of the car with a lot of extra steering corrections and travel distance, compared to being able to do it instantly with the back. If you drive, this should be pretty apparent - look how much physical distance is covered by something like a left turn from one road to an intersecting road. Try getting into a parking space both ways and compare. Better yet, try parallel parking along the side of the street in a space eighteen inches bigger than your car - a breeze if you’ve done it maybe five times in your life before using reverse, but literally, physically impossible if you try to go head-in. Why do you think this is?
Front-in parkers will end up misaligned or doing the re-parking of their own when going into the space, you just don’t care because you’re irrational about this, just like the comedian above lashing out at the evil men for being able to park better than she can. Then, after saving not much effort on parking, they will cause incredible levels of danger to others while backing out into traffic.
There’s one community near me that requires back-in parking as the “smart” meters need to be able to read your plate and the state doesn’t require a front plate.
And if you were on the road and they were backing out, you’d have to wait too. Oh no, you had to wait 30 precious seconds.
The opposite reason is sometimes given for banning back-in parking; people can’t check license plates if you are parked backwards. Cops, parking lot/garage security, etc.
If you know what you’re doing, you can easily back into a parking space using both side mirrors, including the passenger-side convex mirror. Much easier to do it using this method than by looking back over your shoulder.
I back into parking spaces probably more than I drive into them; the primary reason is the ease when leaving the spot.
And I agree with Zoster on this…it’s easier to back into a space than to drive into it, with the caveat that YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING.
Presumably, that person was in the habit of going to where you were coming from on a regular basis, which means a left turn out of their driveway. Backing across two lanes of 50mph traffic sounds like more stress than I would want to deal with. Really, you should be leaving enough room at that speed that someone doing what you describe will not cause you to put them in danger – a driver’s #1 job is to not hit stuff.
Indeed. There are situations where there are two open spaces, or the one on the end is open and you can get in without having to back in, but if it is between cars, you have to back in, and you have to hope the person you are inconveniencing is not crowding you too much. Usually, the car will be far enough out of the lane on the first pass that traffic can resume, even if the parker needs to adjust, but even so, people will almost always be inconvenienced.
The Pit is so much fun sometimes. Some of the posters in this one are not just, “I strongly disagree with you,” but “you are wrong WRONG WRONG, you are a fool and an idiot, and you clearly willfully want to run over children, pets and old people with your horrid driving.”
Now I know you’re just making shit up just to be argumentative. As I said before, the vast majority of drivers – virtually everyone, in my experience – parks front-in. And cars are very rarely misaligned. The reason for this is obvious. If you start the turn near the far side of the traffic lane, there’s more than enough room to straighten out on the way in to the spot.
“incredible levels of danger” … LOL! 
Since almost everyone parks front-in, if that were even remotely true, parking lots would be in constant chaos, with accidents and dead pedestrians everywhere! So, just making shit up again.
No, you would not. No sane driver is going to back in to oncoming traffic. They will wait for a break in the traffic flow. I see this happen all the time with drivers who live on fairly busy streets. They’ll back up close to the street where they have a clear line of sight, and wait for a break in traffic. It’s the virtuous jackoffs who insist on backing in to their driveways that hold up traffic.
Uh…this is exactly the case:
1 in every 5 crashes occurs in a parking lot or parking garage.
NSC found that at least 60,000 people are injured and approximately 500 people die every year in more than 50,000 parking lot crashes.
And, unless North Carolina is somehow unrepresentative of parking in general, 90% of those incidents are caused by people backing out of spaces.
You and the rest of the front-in parking idiots are causing “constant chaos and dead pedestrians everywhere,” you just don’t give a shit. I bet you have one of those “in this house we fucking love science” signs in your yard, but you just don’t care about the empirical data, the physics of how cars work, or any other evidence on this question.