I have fairly good vision especially when I’m wearing glasses. I drive a normal sized car (a Camry). Yet to this day, I’m very poor at parallel parking. I’m also bad at backing my car in and out of tight spaces or being able to judge whether or not my car will be able to make a turn correctly.
I’m not incompetent. It just takes me longer than average.
Is it more likely that my problem is something physical, e.g., I can’t judge distances well because my brain doesn’t let me, or is it psychological, i.e., I just don’t peform these tasks often enough to become comfortable with them?
I’m generally a very well coordinated and accurate guy (very good at baseball, basketball, and golf in my day) but I’ve long had difficulty backing up a vehicle, parallel parking et cetera.
I’ve become much more proficient at backing up these days, as I sat down and practiced it, but parallel parking is still a chore to me.
I’m not sure what it is, I just can’t “visualize” where my car is in relation to the other cars (with enough precision) to perfectly parallel park.
You might be able to clarify this for yourself if you take an hour or two when you are in the mood, and find an empty parking lot or equivalent. Bring some markers such as traffic cones.
Fool around backing and parking until it gets clearer. Another session the next day is likely to polish and consolidate the skill.
It may also be that you don’t have a technique in your head that will work for you. By that, for instance, I mean in backing you set your markers such that you know they are wide enough to allow the car through with space to spare. Then you back up, (a) seeing the car will fit and (b) steering so the rear wheel on the driver’s side follows an imaginary line as it is supposed to. Since the car is rigid, all the rest of the car will also go where it is supposed to.
You can do the same thing parallel parking, tracking the farther rear wheel in the mirror and steering it along the line it needs to follow (first place your car exactly even with the car in front of the space desired, your rear wheels even with its rear wheels).
When doing this, you really don’t need anyone else present, especially trying to help.
Four things to remember, though perhaps you’re not looking for tips(!):
Give yourself enough room by going a bit further forward before starting the manouevre. (So you can get the car rolling before turning the wheel.) (Difficult if harried by someone who’ll pop in the space.)
Make sure you are dead straight.
Start close to the vehicle in front, parallel to you (about 2 feet away).
Turn sharply at first - when you start to turn - and then straighten up smartly.
There’s a real technique involved in parallel parking–as alluded to by those above. I suspect there’s nothing wrong with you, you just don’t really know how to parallel park. Same with backing, with a lot of cars now you can’t see the back of your own car very well so it’s hard to get an idea as to how far away you are from the other car. I just back up until I think I must be really close and stop, if I have the chance, I have a look at how close I really am, that way I eventually get a feel for the distances.
Two feet is pretty generous, and won’t get you near the curb if the space is tight. Usually I aim for 6 inches away or so. Plus always doing it at six inches away forces you to find the ‘magic point’ to start the turn in . If you turn to early you will head the side of your car toward their corner, And know you started to early. And if you start to late you will notice a huge gap growing between their corner and your car. If you always do it at six inches away, you will know when to start the turn, and how much to turn, because it will be the exact ammount every time.
P.S. just incase anybody is thinking of trying my method, the six inches assumes you have a 5 inch wide mirror, if yours is wider, gauge off of it. And watch the other guys mirror it will stick out obvously so don’t farther forward than the intersection of the mirrors.
You so you have pretty good vision, but do you have one dominant eye? I do, which makes judging distances hard (when I was much younger, my optometrist told me that I was only really using one eye, effectively).
This obviously means that I don’t have true stereoscopic vision, so I have to rely on other depth cues. I don’t have too much of a problem parallel parking though, as I have practised plenty. What other people have said is helpful - practise, and when reversing and you think you have gone back far enough, get out and have a look. You’ll usually find that you have more space behind you than you thought. When parallel parking, use your side mirrors, lots. Angle the nearside one down so that you can see the kerb better.
Try and think of the parallel park as a three-stage process: turn, reverse straight, turn in the opposite direction. A lot of people screw up by not straightening up once they have the correct angle to reverse into the space, and so end up turning in too much and being unable to turn back before they hit the kerb.
Oh, another thing — and this is the reason I failed my first driving test :smack:
Before lining yourself up with the car in front of the space - make sure it is parked properly!.
The driving examiner on my first test asked me to park in behind a car. I lined myself up next to it, reversed into the space, and promptly found myself rapidly nearing the kerb. Trying to rectify the situation, I still touched a rear wheel against the kerb, thus failing instantly.
The problem? The car I had lined myself up against was parked with two wheels up on the pavement. And I was so preoccupied with lining myself up with it that I failed to notice this… oops.
Really. I live in Chicago. Have you seen some of the idiots that have learned to parallel park? You can, too. (Uhh, that didn’t come out quite right.)
It helps if you can have a good teaching friend, but if you don’t, here’s how I do it.
Pull up next to the “in front of the space” car. Your back bumpers should be even.I give it about 8-10 inches between us if it’s a large space, or just enough so are mirrors don’t hit if it’s tight. And you must be absolutely parallel to the car. Hence the name.
Start slowly reversing, and immediately as your wheel begin to turn, move the steering wheel all the way to the right. No, *all *the way. It’ll go more. If this is too hard, turn your wheels before you start to move.
When your mirror is even with the back window of the front car, whip your steering wheel all the way to the left. I’ve also heard this taught as “when the back of your car’s frront door is even with the front car’s bumper,” but I find the mirror easier to see.
That should be it.
IF you’re not fitting because your front end is further away from the curb than your back end, then put it back into drive, keeping your foot on the brake. Turn the steering wheel all the way to the right and move forward as far as you can. Then put it in reverse, and back up **straight **- *not *turned all the way to the left. This prevents your back end from moving back out of the space. Repeat as needed until you’re in. (If you pull forward right and reverse left, you’ll screw yourself up and end up with your ass hanging out of the space.)
And don’t be too hard on yourself. It does take some practice. And even when you’re really good at it, there will be absurd moments when it Just. Doesn’t. Work. (My husband and I refer to these as “parking impaired” moments.) Pull out and try again.
I now know why I can’t parallel park unless there’s at least two spaces in front of the space I’m parking in.
I’m seeing all of this “6 inches from the car in front of the space you’re pulling in to” and “turn immediately after you start backing” and I’m starting to sweat in terror just reading it! There’s no way I could do that. I can never get that close to another car with my vehicle…I’d be so nervous about hitting it that I would actually hit it.
Then it’s easy. Find a parking lot and a couple of squishy traffic cones (you can even buy them at toy stores with “Kids playing” stamped on them) and practice until you’re not nervous anymore! Doesn’t matter how many times you hit a squishy cone.
Seriously? I’m trying to picture this (obviously reversing left and right as I’m in the UK) and it seems to me that if you turn as early as this you’ll swipe the back end of the car in front as the nose of your car swings into the space.
So it all just comes down to practice? I can’t go to the pharmacy and buy some magical parallel parking pills?
I was afraid of that.
But would someone who has poor depth perception have a problem with parallel parking (I don’t)? For me, the problem is not knowing where I can stop, so I always end up stopping too soon.
I also found that I get confused with directions (left-right) when I look in a mirror and then double check by turning my head.
I think the key to parallel parking is not being afraid to barely tap another car. Get closer to the cars than you think you can … and then get even a little bit closer. Back up further than you think you can – get out the car and have a look if you must convince your brain that you really have 3 more feet to back up, not the 2 inches your eyes are reporting.
But do this all deliberately and cautiously – that way if you do tap a bumper, no harm is done.
That may very well be my major problem. If I even tap a bumper, I’m conditioned by my parents (who taught me to drive) to practically want to leave a note with my insurance information on the windshield. There is a 12" force-field of do-not-touch on the outside of my car, and if I violate that forcefield I’m a horrible driver…
The answer to the OP is probably just down to spatial awareness.
Some people have better spatial awareness than others. Parallel parking requires a good spatial awareness, in order to appreciate where your vehicle is in comparison with the others, and also what you need to do to get it where you wish to be. You need it to a greater degree than most other driving because you also need to be aware of how your vehicle will move in different ways and directions because you’re doing all the steering from one end only. In most other driving this isn’t much of a factor.
Obviously practice and ‘rules of thumb’ help, but if you have lousy spatial awareness you’ll always find it tricky.
The principle rule I always use is that no matter how good a parallel parker you are, and how tight a space you can squeeze into, what really matters is how good is the people parked next to you are at getting out. There’s no victory to squeezing yourself in if all it mean is you have bashed paintwork when you return to your car.
The second rule I use is always park next to a fancier and newer car than yours. That way they’ve got more to lose.
I won’t add to the technique suggestions, just reiterate that you won’t know if something’s “wrong” until you take a little time for specific practice. If you don’t notice perception problems in other tasks I doubt it’s physical though.
Backing up & in close driving take practice. Backing up is coompletely different steering style and you can’t see the whole car so you need to learn judging distance. Once you get good it can lead to awsome car control though. Got my practice in car jockeying for rental companies for a few years. Nothing beats paid practice in someone else’s car.
