All of you who back in, I’m sure you do it perfectly, but can I reiterate to you the importance of doing so? Backing in so that you are across the lines is not a proper parking job. If your car is still sticking out this is not a proper parking job. If your car is partly into the next spot this is not a proper parking job. If the lane you are in is a one-way and diagonal parking you really shouldn’t be backing in because you’re going to be coming out facing traffic.
I don’t particularly like people who always insist on parking backwards with their huge cars - the majority of the cars I see are parked all wrong, in other lanes, etc. I would respectfully ask that you just take care, please.
ETA: I see women doing it a LOT. In their minivans or SUVs. Which I’m sorry to say but they can barely control - I see them trying it over and over, ignoring the people waiting to get past, and then eventually parking wrong and giving it up as a bad job. Don’t you know you’re giving the rest of us women a bad name?!
I see a LOT of this. But the number of badly parked vehicles among the backed in cars does not exceed the number of badly parked vehicles among the front-in cars. In fact, since front-in vehicle parking far exceeds back-in vehicle parking, IME, the opposite is true, just from sheer mathematics.
But those who can’t (or more likely won’t) park straight and evenly between the lines? That is a whole 'nother thread. But a concept I agree wholeheartedly with! It’s just plain rude to park all cock-eyed so that one forces later arriving drivers to either not get to use a space, or to have to park to close to their fellow parkers.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that many parking lots have tiny, tiny, narrow spaces? With annoying little decorative islands that have high curbs around them every few spaces or so? And the aisle to drive down is also very narrow?
I have two vehicles; one is a small FWD coupe that can park on a dime and give back 7.5 cents change. The other one is a fullsized cargo van with no windows in the sides and only small, rear windows with tinting–about 4.5 feet off the ground. Ten foot bed, RWD, VERY long wheelbase. Wanna guess how easy it is to park that thing frontways in said tiny space from the aforementioned narrow ass aisle? Then to back it out of the space while oblivious pedestrians and tiny cars refuse to acknowledge its existence? I have huge side mirrors with fisheyes and I can back in park that big rectangular bastard in any spot with two inches to spare on each side and pull out frontways without a hitch, and I can see everything in front of me because the van has no nose. To pull into a space frontways requires a much larger space and sometimes a thousand point turn–with the same to get out, but then I’m going backwards with a blind spot the size of the Battleship Missouri. RWD vehicles with long wheelbases back into parking spots for the same reason that forklifts have the steering wheels in the back–they’re just more maneuverable that way!
Besides, it freaks people out when I park next to the staircase at work and there’s exactly two inches leeway on the passenger and rear sides–they can’t figure out how I do it.
Also it’s not a guy/girl thing, it’s a good/not so good driver thing.