I don’t mean for some special reason, I just mean for your typical parking situation. It’s usually so much easier to go in forward and then back out when you leave, but a lot of people do it the other way. A lot of people do it even with their SUVs in my super cramped parking garage, and it’s not because they’re some kind of parking pimps, believe me. I’ve seen them do it many times, most of them take *forever *getting into the spot (so would I in their situation). What on earth is the point?
I have a retaining wall along my driveway. I have to give my door space to open if I pull straight in. Backing in, my door swings out towards the yard. Makes it easier.
I back into end slots at the mall for the same reason. I prefer having my door open out into open space instead of towards a car parked next to me. I do pull into the other slots that have cars on each side. No reason to back into them.
We’ve had this question before, and by far the most common answer is “I might need to get out fast, and it’s easier to pull out than to back out.” I don’t get it, myself. I’ve never been in a parking situation where pulling out would have saved me more than 10 seconds, and most of the people I see backing in take at least that long straightening themselves out. And don’t even get me started on the people who back into slant spaces–that’s a total time suck on both ends, unless you drive the wrong way up the lane coming and going.
Backing in gives you control as the traffic situation doesn’t change as you maneuver.
Backing out, you need to come almost all the way out before you can see cars or pedestrians. (depending on your vehicle/who’s parked next to you)
I have a friend who backs in to parking spaces and I don’t think his rationale is any more developed than “I can either spend my time futzing around backing in or backing out and of the two the former strikes me as preferable.”
My preference is to pull in to an empty spot that is head-on another empty spot so I can keep pulling in and then I’m all prepped to simply drive out at the end.
A friend of mine who worked for the phone company said they commissioned a study to see what they could change to cut down on the number of accidents their trucks & vans got into. The simplest change was: never back up. Park way out in the parking lot and pull through as Inner Stickler said. Part 2 of their change was, if you have to back up, back up at the end of your drive rather than the beginning. In the midwest, in winter time you don’t know when you start driving how much traction you’ve got or how much brakes, or how well your car’s working when you get into it and it’s below zero out. If you do all your backing & filling once your car is warmed up and the windows are all free of fog, then you’re less likely to get into an accident because you couldn’t stop, maneuver or see where you were going.
I try to pull through (if possible) or back in at the parking garage I use for work. Traffic is much lighter at 8am than it is when I leave at 5pm. Backing out in the afternoon is harder because there is more traffic and more pedestrians. And there’s the risk that some douche’s mega-pickup will be blocking my view.
I back in to my driveway, as there isn’t good visibility backing out as far as traffic, toddlers, etc. It makes it much easier getting out when my car windows are still semi-frosted, too.
Same with parking at work; giant SUVs park on either side of me and I’d have to back out way too far in order to see what’s coming, so I always back in.
In other parking lots, it depends on how good the visibility is. I often pull in forward, but just as often the visibility is so poor that it’s worth backing in.
I find that people who don’t like the idea of backing in are often just not used to doing it much themselves, so they overestimate the difficulty.
I saw a car the other day that kept repeating something like “WARNING, THIS CAR IS BACKING UP” the whole time they were reversing. I’d never seen that before.
Anyhoo, I’d definitely get into more accidents if I tried to back into small parking spaces. But I’m not good at parking (I’m CAREFUL at parking and always err on the side of caution, so I don’t get in accidents, but I can never really tell where my car ends and I don’t get how anyone else can tell either).
It’s weird. It’s one of those knacks that some people have, and other people just don’t. I have that knack…my mother didn’t. I just have a very fine sense of exactly where the corners of my car are. I can, in parking, come within an inch of the car next to mine, absolutely safe from a scrape.
(Until the horrible day when I got a new pair of eyeglasses! YIKES! Changed my perception, just enough…I scraped the side of my car against the towing rig on a tow-truck. Didn’t hurt him at all, but left me with a lovely foot-long scratch on my passenger-side door!)
I think I’ve backed into a parking space maybe three times in my entire life. I feel a pathetic sense of accomplishment when I find a space where I can pull through, but I really never back into spaces. First of all, I find it more difficult than backing out, and second of all it drives me nuts waiting for somebody else to reverse into a space and doesn’t bother me at all waiting for somebody else to back out and do unto others yadda yadda. It always seems to take longer for someone to reverse in than out, though I don’t know if that’s actually true or just my perception.
After twenty-plus years in law enforcement, the hubby is conditioned to back into spaces. The rationale is “I know I have plenty of time to safely back in now. I don’t know how quickly I’ll need to get out, and it’s safer to pull out than to back out in a hurry.” Makes sense to me in his type of job. I don’t bother, myself, having never had a job where that kind of situation came up.
This is my primary reason for backing in; I drive a compact car yet live in a state that seemingly only drives huge pick-ups and SUVs. Pulling out backwards is difficult, as I usually can’t see around my neighbors. If I go to a parking lot/garage that doesn’t have angled/one-direction lots, I either back in or find a spot that allows me to pull forward into another spot. Luckily, driving a compact makes backing in a snap.
Just today I was in a very crowded parking lot when the car in front of be was backing into a parking spot. The person in my passenger seat complained about it and my response was, what many people upthread said, “Well, she can back in or back out, who cares”.
While I don’t back into parking spots (anymore), I can back into them very quickly. The thing is, if you’re backed in you can already see what’s going on when you pull out, and when you back into the spot there’s no one driving behind you (or hopefully walking behind you) so that makes it easier to do that as well. But you have to have ‘the knack’ for it to begin with.
As for why I don’t back into them, I’m not sure. I think part of it is that it’s hard to do it fast enough to not lose your spot and it’s unusual enough that it’s difficult with that many pedestrians around.
Nowadays, backup cameras are making it easier to back out. I can see what’s going on behind me and off to the sides before I start backing out which is really helpful. OTOH, I almost got hit that way. A few days ago, I was backing out. I rolled about three feet out and the lady next to me started backing out. I stopped, she kept going, I honked, she kept going, looked over, saw that she had both hands on the wheel and her eyes (literally) 8 or 12 inches from the rear view monitor. She had no idea what was going on anywhere but where that camera pointed. If I was a few feet further back she would have hit my car. She was so tuned into that camera she didn’t even hear me honking.
In my full size truck, it’s a three point maneuver to pull straight in. To back in, it’s only a two point maneuver.
ETA: This is in parking lots with narrow driveways.
From this link Warning PDF
- Safe parking
Damage to vehicles often happens in car parks where we least expect it. Think prevention! Use space – park
away from other vehicles, trolleys and activity areas where possible.
40% of all company traffic accidents involve parking, manoeuvring or reversing.
Look at every bus barn, every post office lot where they park the delivery trucks, look at UPS/Fedex every single vehicle is nose out of the parking space for a reason.
I cannot find a link but from the police we know (I work in driver training) that the number is the same for them but their numbers show 40% for backing alone.
Less than 1% of all driving is reverse. It is pretty simple to work out that reverse is far more dangerous than driving. Backing in is far safer due to visibility issues, When you arrive you know what is going on around your car and the space you want to park in, when you leave that situation is much more hazardous.
(tl:dnr) Amateurs drive in.
I’d rather back in but most people don’t want to wait for it. It’s easier for me to pull out of a spot than to back out when there are so many assholes who will speed down the aisles or swing around you when you are backing out instead of waiting. If I am next to a van or SUV I can’t see what is coming until I am half way out anyway.
If I park in the driveway at home I back in for two reasons. It puts the passenger side closer to the door and since my son carries any bags in it’s only fair to put him closer to the door so he doesn’t have to walk around the truck. The neighbor parks his van on the street, as well as the people across from us park their camper behind our driveway. I can’t see around the van to see what is coming down the street and it’s a tight squeeze getting out with the camper behind me. It’s easier to pull out.
Backing in is the standard way to park in Singapore, and is taught in driving school. You have to be able to reverse park in order to get your driving licence. I actually find it a lot harder to park “nose first”.
That said, when I was in the US, I found that the car parks were somehow designed for nose-in parking (not even talking about herringbone lots, just bog standard lots at right angles to the road), and reverse parking was more difficult for some reason.
I don’t back in, but my partner’s company has a ‘reverse parking only’ rule in the company car park. They regard it as a safety issue – backing out could mean backing over your colleague, apparently.
About a half-dozen times just in the few years I’ve been at SDMB.
Although it’s not the only reason to back in, I’m constantly surprised in these threads that most people don’t seem to understand that, if there is limited space in front of the parking spot, backing in may be the only way to enter/exit that is even geometrically possible. If it’s possible to enter nose-first, it may still be impossible to exit if a blocking vehicle arrives in the interim. Even when nose-first is geometrically possible, backing-in will be easier since there is more margin.
I may be more aware of this because my pickup is longer than a typical passenger car, and because too-small parking lanes and improper parking are common where I live.
The reason backing in is more feasible geometrically is that, when turning, the steering-axle end moves much more than the other end. I think drivers are aware that parallel parking is often impossible nose-first, but ignore that a similar principle applies in “normal” parking.
ETA: Obviously backing in to angled parking spaces is absurdly wrong.