I don’t understand any of this. If you drive into a parking space, you will still have to back out even if you have rear-wheel steering.
And even if you don’t have rear-wheel steering, you can steer out (reverse out) at the same angle you used to get in.
At least two armored cars in the Second World War had four-wheel steering. The Brits evaluated a captured Italian Autoblinda AB41 and found it was a major handful at speeds more than 20-30 mph. And one of the German small armored cars had four-wheel steering at first, but it was later dropped, apparently because the benefits weren’t worth the cost.
I also remember reading that rear wheels which steer more than a minuscule amount can cause high-speed instability (which is certainly borne out by the Autoblinda).
The Nash Quad four-wheel drive truck of WWI had four-wheel steering, too, but it was a low-speed vehicle, so presumably stability problems didn’t arise.
If you have ever driven a forklift truck you would understand why rear wheel stearing never caught on for street cars. It works fine in tight spaces and slow speeds like in a warehouse but at almost any speed faster than a walk is very unstable and prone to massive amounts of oversteer.
How is this so difficult to understand?
Go put a few paper towels over your exhaust pipe. No matter how new or clean your engine is, those towels will be discolored after running the car for a minute, especially on startup.
Now imagine that the cars are backed up against a concrete wall. Every time someone starts their car, it’s spewing out dirty gasses, at least some of which will stain the concrete. It won’t take long in a busy parking garage to have nasty discolorations all over the walls, and might even cause corrosion problems – there’s a reason mufflers rust out long before your chassis does.
As for getting exhaust on other cars, no it’s not going to terribly damage the car, but it’s impolite, and it is a bit dirty. Why should that person’s property be messed with simply because you can’t drive?
ETA: Also forgot to mention that people generally hit more things when backing up than they do normally, so head-in parking also serves to prevent bad drivers from backing into someone.
If you head in to a parking lot, you have to back out. Which is more dangerous than backing in, because the aisle is more likely to have other people and cars than an empty parking space.
Except that in a garage, which is where you see head-in parking only signs, there are concrete walls. And any busy parking lot will often have a car in the space behind you/opposite you. Additionally, a person waiting for your spot will be hopefully alert enough to honk should you appear to be in danger of ramming them, and will usually give you more room than you would have in a parking space.
In any case, the ridiculousness of backing into an angled parking space means you are doing wide turns and pointing against traffic, both of which are probably significantly more dangerous than backing out of a parking space normally.
My company has a policy that you must back into and drive out of parking spaces, for safety reasons, and there are signs to that effect in the car parks. Is that concept not common in the US?
I don’t think anybody is trying to defend backing into an angled lot. Still :dubious: about the smog factor you claim though. I think the only reasonable opinion presented so far is the license plate thing (not having a front license plate).
I am defending backing into an angled space. When it is free to do so, there is nothing wrong with it.
About the smog, people drive up right behind your running car at a stoplight anyway, its a non issue.
Even if you back up as close as possible to the car in the space behind (or the wall), on almost all cars the exhaust pipe will be nowhere near as close to the other car or the wall than a paper towel placed over the exhaust is, due to the size of the car bumpers. Your argument is not rational - especially the second part, which has already been rebutted by other posters.
I noticed today that the street sweepers are all rear steering. If you’re willing to drive something the size of a small garage and go no more than 20 MPH I think we have your vehicle. Of course, there are other issues with parking that thing that might cause problems.
You seem to be making two assumptions that I would not:
You assume there’s always plenty of aisle space in front of the parking space, and/or the parking space is very wide. In that case, I agree there’s little danger of hitting the car next to you while backing out of a space. But in a cramped parking lot, backing out of a space without hitting the car next to you is much more difficult than driving forward out of the parking space.
You assume pedestrians are not a concern. But we’re talking about a parking lot here, and by definition, it has pedestrians (i.e. people walking to or from their cars). Pedestrians are very rarely in empty parking spots, so you’re unlikely to hit one while backing into a parking space. It’s much more likely when backing out of a space and onto the aisle.
Incorrect. Those gasses have to go somewhere, and they come out with significant enough velocity to stick a good portion to a surface a few feet away. This is not difficult to test, and I really don’t understand the insistence here. Go start your car and stand behind it, exhaust gasses easily travel several feet and are still warm and smell like exhaust.
Unless your contention is that these reasons and others given by garage owners and convention are all, in fact, totally mistaken assumptions that need to be torn down, I believe the existence of “head in parking only” signs in almost every parking garage and the general custom of parking head in are good enough evidence.
Got a cite for those test results?
Yes, those gases have to go somewhere, but they get diluted by air almost immediately after they exit the exhaust pipe.
Yes, my cite is my experience with having been around a car, ever, and having seen exhaust discolor stuff in garages and loading docks over time. Go conduct an experiment yourself, or find your own cites that exhaust is diluted nearly instantaneously and magically disappears into the air.
What garage owners have chimed in here? Good enough evidence for what? Your theory?
There is insistence because your assertion that exhaust gasses from 2-5 feet away with very, very little particulate matter in it would actually dirty another car enough for car owners or garage owners to actually give a damn does not stand on its own without some form of evidence or cites.
My post is my cite does not hold up either.
ivn, cars are constantly within several feet of each other at any stoplight or stop sign, or just day to day driving, so my backin-in parking is not going to make me lose anymore sleep, should a few errant specs of exhaust get onto your immaculate ride.
This reminds me of the guy complaining about his neighbor ACROSS THE STREET smoking on his own front porch. Yes technically a few molecules probably touch you. It doesn’t matter though.