I keep seeing these car commercials that advertise how their cars can now parallel park themselves. A cool feature but I hardly see a need for it for the masses.
Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I had to parallel park.
You want to impress me? Teach my big ass F150 to three point park itself. Not hard to do, just a pain in the ass.
When I’m out and about, its pretty normal. So I’d say about once a day - sometimes more often.
I tried “parking instructions” on the SAAB. ANd while they did park the car, I found it faster and easier to do it myself.
And what is a three point park? For me, If I’m not doing it in 2 I’m annoyed at myself.
I parallel park nearly every day, but I live in a densely populated 'burb outside of Boston and I have street parking.
Not only do I parallel park regularly, but I’m apparently the only one in my entire county that fucking knows how to do it properly, so I’m all for everyone getting cars that do it for them - even if it takes a few minutes more.
It’s parking in a normal parking space. When you have cars on both sides of the space you want to occupy and the lanes are too narrow. (a common thing in Dallas) You have to pull up to where you’re bumper to (almost) bumper with the guy on the right, put the truck in reverse while turning the wheel right, then pull forward towards the empty space.
Again, I drive a big truck. This is a hassle that people with normal sized cars don’t have to worry about.
Translating for 'Mericans. Our style is drive past desired lot, swing car so angled left across lane. Reverse into lot.
I have a garage and most of my car trips are to some place with a parking lot (like a grocery store or a movie theatre). So I don’t parallel park very often; maybe a few times a year.
I parallel park probably once a week. I’m fairly good at doing it without too much back and forth so long as I accurately judge that the space is big enough. Somehow I’m not as good at that as I ought to be.
I wouldn’t buy a car just to get parallel assist, but if I had it, I might use it just to make the process faster, if it does. Though I don’t know that it does.
I p-park maybe once every couple of weeks. When I was learning to drive 25 years ago I struggled with it, and my dad made it a point to teach me, go so far as to set up cinder blocks with wood sticks to define the space I had to park the car in; the cinder blocks were low enough to not damage the car, but the sticks, when bumped, gave an obvious visual cue that I had bumped the “car” in front or behind me.
Constantly, especially on city streets in Boston, Cambridge, and several of the Boston 'burbs.
If you don’t have to do it, you must live somewhere with plenty of lined parking.
I haven’t parallel parked since…last night. Not many places in my part of South Florida require it.
Two I can think of are:
My regular bar
My friend’s apartment complex
So I actually parallel park twice a week, at least.
It’s amusing to sit at an outside table watching the customers-to-be trying to park.
-D/a
I don’t own a car anymore but when I did, half a dozen times every day.
Once or twice a year, maybe. Mostly depends on how often I get back to the States.
It accounts for about 80% of my total parking. I even have to parallel park on the street outside my own apartment. But then I live in urban London.
I am, as it happens, both female and brilliant at parallel parking 
Yes, this is our situation as well. We don’t drive often, but we have to parallel park every time we come home.
Once every few years. I had to do it a few months ago, it was the first time I can remember since I was a teenager.
Almost never. In fact, when my oldest daughter was practicing for her drivers test about fifteen years ago and was having a hard time with the parallel parking part I told her confidently that I’d show her how easy it was to do – and I couldn’t do it. Not to the test standards, anyway.
(The local drivers test station has a couple of specially marked spots for the parallel parking test, and encourages would-be drivers to practice on them after hours. Better there than with other people’s cars.)
At least once a day. We park in front of our house and have to parallel park to do this. I go downtown a few times a week and have to parallel park there as well.
I notice I have more coordination issues parking in a spot to my left then to my right. Probably just lack of practice, but it’s annoying.
98% of the time I park, it’s parallel. I live in Chicago, so very few places have parking lots big enough to hold their customers, and we have street parking at our apartment.
We also have lots of one way streets, and I lived on one for 5 years, so I had to learn to parallel park on the left, too. That took some extra practice, I admit.
I grew up in the 'burbs, where quite often the parking lots are literally larger than the stores the served. Parallel parking was NOT on our driving test, nor was it taught in Driver’s Ed. So I used to be terrified of driving into the Big Scary City, and I’d only do it if I was going somewhere I could be fairly certain of finding pull-in parking. Which meant I hardly ever came here. Then I started dating a guy who lived in the city, so I pretty much had to learn if I wanted to see him.
I’m pretty good at it now. Not as good as my SO, a former truck and ambulance driver who can parallel park a moving van with a car trailer on it in one move, but pretty good.
Not all that often any more - maybe once or twice a month. I lived in Chicago and DC long enough to get pretty good at it, though.
I think the automatic parallel parking is mostly of benefit to people like my mother, who rarely have a need to do it and will drive around for ages looking for a parking spot that they can just pull into. If you parallel park frequently, that feature isn’t going to be of much use.