On main street in the town where I live, there are areas where the street parking is slanted and you are required by ordinance to back in.
Don’t know why, but I thought the thread title was some kind of code for anal sex.
That’s because your mind is in the gutter while ours are out in the street. 
Surely that’s diagonal, with spaces downstream. But in my travels I’ve never seen that! And I’ve been to all 50 states. Never seen it, but that’s cool.
Can people share towns (& state) where that’s the case?
My husband needs to learn this. He backs in or shoots through every single time and then whines when he has to maneuver the cart past peoples cars to get to the trunk to load up.
I’m an ambidextrous parker. I drive into the garage because my husband has the back in side and there is space for both drivers doors to open to the centre that way. I drive in when I’m shopping and need to load things into the trunk, and I back in when I am going to be in a rush leaving. Commuter parking lots are the best places to back in. Everyone arrives on their own schedule but when everyone detrains at the same time and wants to leave, being able to just drive out and escape the insanity quickly is lovely.
Here you go. A Google Street View, even, with cars parked.
Yep. I tend to prefer backing in, but it helps that my car has the rear-view camera and sensor options to help tell me how I am doing. But if I am in a crowded parking lot or facing a diagonal parking space, I’ll usually go in front first.
And to the poster above, I will (if picking up just a few things) often do the ‘2-space shoot-through’ to get the advantages of backing in without having to delay anyone by backing in.
Has pissed off a few people planning to pull into that spot, though…
And one near me - Google Maps, with parking sign to boot.
Pottstown PA, and Somerville MA - cool, thanks for those. I grew up in the northeast and don’t recall ever seeing that, but I’ve been in San Francisco for 30+ years now. Even on my trips back east I haven’t seen that.
How do the folks there like these?
I wonder if there are any west of the Mississippi? I like the concept, but it sure would be different and would take people here quite a bit to get used to.
What gets me is when people don’t pull through. At my office parking building another guy gets there early like I do. He doesn’t pull through, and the entire lot is practically empty. :smack:
Even more of a head scratcher that I’ve seen several times is when someone has an empty space in front and backs out anyway. The lot isn’t angled and all aisles are two-way, so that’s not an issue; the only thing I can think of is that some peoples’ thinking is stuck in “I went in nose-first so I must back out” mode.
and here I thought I was the only one
GMTA
" I first learned to do it in an ambulance. If I do it that way, I could pull out really fast without anybody getting hurt. "
:eek:
You shouldn’t engage in unexpected behaviors like pulling across into a space that someone is pulling into normally. You would definitely be at fault if this resulted in an accident. They’re fully justified in being pissed off.
Ermhhh… you don’t have to move to the opposite side to to park rear end first, in fact the proper way is to move to the same side, until your seat is in line with the second parking spot line (or the car parked there), turn 45 degrees away, then back in.
Easy, quick, no hassle and if you are a bit off it’s easier to adjust the position without sticking out too much into the lane and with a much better situational awareness.
So in short the problem was not about backing in per se, it was that the driver on that SUV was an idiot.
On the other hand you have to move to the opposite side if you want to park front first, then cut through the lane to move into the spot.
As an aside, I just learned to drive last year (at 34 :eek:) and I had no problems with backing in; then again I live in an condo were some very affluent people reside and you learn to back in nice and smooth when you have to do it between a Porsche and top-end BMW… 
Early in this thread, before it was moved from GQ to The Pit, zweisamkeit posted some references showing that back-in parking is safer than nose-in parking. It’s a good reminder to share them again,
The second link above states that more and more streets in Sacramento CA are having them, so the answer is yes! When I see my first one, I will celebrate!
It’s also a good reminder that while those articles assert that backing in is safer, not one of them has any data or links to research that supports that assertion. If there is any research to support it, it’s very well hidden.
Good point. If there’s research data I’d like to see it. In the meantime angled back-in parking spots in Sacramento existed back in 1911:
If I have the empty space in front of me, I’ll generally pull out through it.
But I can understand why some people don’t: IME, there’s a decent chance that someone will decide to try to park in the spot that I’m going through, at the same time I’m trying to pull through it.
It doesn’t happen quite often enough to keep me from doing it as a general rule, but I can see how it might put some people off from doing so.
Could you come here and teach classes on proper backing-in technique to the people who park in my garage?
Seriously, I never see any of them back in with this degree of smoothness.
Well, sure, if the parking space is on your left, you’re going to have to cut across the oncoming lane. But if you’re parking in a space on your right, not really. The key thing is to keep your left front corner as close as possible to the car in the space to the left of the one you’re pulling into, until you straighten out at the last moment. One smooth motion and you’re in.
(Sure, if there’s no oncoming traffic, I’ll swing into the left lane a tad just to improve the angle, but if I can’t do that, I’m still good.)