Yeah, one kind of wait annoys me, and and another equally long wait in an essentially identical situation mysteriously doesn’t bother me at all.
Yeah, that explains everything, Einstein.
You’re an adult (I think); you’re supposed to figure it out for yourself. Have fun.
Hey, I picture you writing your posts on your monitor in crayon, then realizing, “oh, I’ve got to type these things.” But to each his own.
Every car I have ever driven, and just about every car I have ever seen, has superior viewing out the front window opposed to the rear window. I would rather slowly back into a spot using my side mirrors to line up with a parking spot than wildly guess using very limited viewing angles whether or not someone is about to be run over by me as I back out.
I used to drive an ambulance. I can state as fact that ( at least in the State of New York ) drivers are taught to, and expected to, back ambulances into parking spots unless egress can be accomplished without doing any two or three point turns. I was already an experienced backing-inner, so this came rather naturally to me.
You do realize, right, that people operate their vehicles in a manner they find to be safest, and not just to piss you the fuck off? You don’t realize that? You should.
…I prefer the “shoot through.” I look for two car parks in parallel that are empty so I drive head in to the first car park and through to the second so that I can simply drive out head first when I decide to leave. All the advantages and speed of the “head first” with the safety advantages of the “back in.” Of course that often means I’m parking slightly further away from my destination, but I’m okay with that. (and it obviously doesn’t work at every instance: I tend to go in head first most of the time but on occasion I back in.)
Having had Cervical fusion and rather limited motion of my neck, I always find a ‘pull through’ whenever possible. C3, C4, C5 and C6 thank me for it!!
By far the best method.
No one would argue that an ambulance should be ready to move quickly to respond to an emergency, and should take its time only when it’s got the time. Hence it should back into a parking space so it can leave at full tilt if need be.
That doesn’t apply to non-emergency vehicles, though.
I do, but the gain in safety doesn’t seem evident.
The place I encounter this, you see, is in the garage at work, where there’s a 5 mph speed limit. And while people rarely go that slowly, you don’t see a lot of people going more than 15-20 mph; there just isn’t enough room to do that. This garage has been in place for nearly a decade, and during that entire time, I’ve never heard of a fender-bender involving someone backing out of a parking space. (Nor has a car hit a pedestrian in the garage - not only have I never heard of it, but I’m sure that if it ever happened, the entire building would know about it inside of an hour.)
But by and large, there aren’t multiple routes through this (multi-story) garage, so if someone’s taking nearly a minute to back their behemoth into a space, you’ve got to sit and wait while they do it.
OTOH, I rarely have to wait for people backing into parking spaces at the grocery store or WallyWorld or the local shopping center. No, I don’t know why.
That’s because the people at the shopping centre do not know you, whereas many of the ones at the office lot do. 
I wouldn’t be surprised if the difference might be in drive-through spaces being significantly more available at the shopping centres than in the multi-story garage.
See, if you back in, it does not unroll the TP.
*It backs the car into the parking space. It does this whenever it is told.
It backs the car into the parking space. Or else it gets the hose.*
I hope that the OP will be gratified to learn that, since reading this thread, and all the persuasive arguments in favor of backing in to a space instead of pulling in head first, I have started backing into parking spots most of the time, including my own garage.
I was already considering this at home, since the ramp from our garage to the street is fairly steep, and I was worried that I could easily not see a small child behind me in the rearview mirror. But I have been convinced by my fellow Dopers that backing into most spaces is the best practice, and am rapidly improving my backward maneuvering skills.
Thanks, all.
Welcome to the team of back-up(per)s!
I never realised there was such annoyance. I don’t live in a complex, but I reverse into my garage for the simple reason that I then have space on the drivers side to get out, whereas I would have limited space the other side due to a wall.
On a different note, is your time so precious that 30 seconds makes that much difference to your world?
I almost always park nose first at shopping centres and grocery stores so I have easy access to the trunk. Everywhere else I back into the spot.
Data point: one of my friends now has to have her door, quarter panel and rear lights replaced, for yesterday a car backed out of it’s parking space into her.
at my local supermarket the carparks are setup with a central aisle with a row of cars on either side
You only have access to the boot / trunk if you reverse in
I forgot to mention that the last accident I was involved in was when a pickup truck backed out of its parking space and hit me. The first thing the driver said when she got out of her car was, “I didn’t even see you.”
This almost certainly would not have happened if she had been pulling out head first.
Atypically, I parked nose-in at the KFC today. While I was eating the cars pulled in to the spaces on either side of mine and someone in a truck parked sideways along the curb behind my vehicle.
I was trapped. There was not enough room to back out far enough to get out of my space. Had I backed in I could have started the turn as I nosed out and could have made my escape with no problem.
Totally. Except for the yahoos who pull through angled parking spots.
I was just at a local restaurant for lunch. Angled parking spaces, two rows head-to-head, surrounded by the driving path clearly marked with arrows for traffic to flow one way. Of course about 20% of the drivers had pulled through the angled spots, so now they are nose-first into the one-way traffic.
I swear, driving a car makes some people lose 80 IQ points.
That’s what the person who hit my friend also said.
If there was any justice in the world, they’d drive into each other.