If one is changing, especially in the back of an SUV you have a bit more privacy as you’re changing behind your car instead of in the aisle.
Depends upon the vehicle/trim package. If you’re head-in in a parking spot the danger is from the sides not directly behind you. By the time the other vehicle going perpendicular to you gets into your camera’s view it may be too late.
Backup cameras have been required since 2018 so as long as you don’t buy any car older than that, you should get one. (And actually, it’s possible to retrofit an older car to add a backup camera. I’ve seen them attached to the license plate frame.)
Yup. Pulling in forward doesn’t delay people behind you. Backing in does. Yes you need to wait to pull out safely. I feel making people wait while I back in is rude.
The studies that allegedly “prove” that backing in is safer are very flawed.
First: I can’t find any that are even of quasi experimental design. They are observational and extremely subject to selection bias. I strongly suspect that those most concerned about safety are quickest to adopt the behavior that is advertised as safer. Of course they are involved in fewer accidents, no matter how they parked.
Second: as pointed out those observational correlations were made before the relative ubiquity of back up cameras and now proximity detectors. Heck many new cars automatically stop if there is a pedestrian anywhere near during backing up.
What I don’t understand is those jerks who insist on backing out of parking spaces. Don’t they understand that it takes more time that way, and they’re making us all wait on them? Why can’t they pull out forward like normal people?
Assuming I’m looking for a parking space, my frustration at waiting for someone to back out of a space is mitigated by the fact that I can then take their vacated space. So there’s that.
When someone backs into a space, not only do I have to wait for them, I don’t get a space either. So it’s doubly frustrating.
Not to mention the fact that many backwards-parkers simply suck at the task. They take forever lining themselves up, backing up, going forward, reversing, going forward, reversing, etc. I watched someone struggle to do this for 10 minutes in a parking garage once, blocking traffic the whole time.
Backing out is something done when there is no visible other traffic coming. And once the path is clear it is fairly quick. It is fairly infrequent that others have to wait much while someone pulls out. It is relatively frequent for others to wait while someone backs in.
As I said in the other thread, my vehicle has so many cameras that it is able to generate an overhead view when I put it in reverse. This allows me to back in more precisely than I otherwise could, and that view is cool to look at, especially when it has been raining and it is nighttime. The aiming lines help a bit, but I have gotten much better at centering on the first try. Angled parking spaces, yeah, not so much.
::enters thread wondering what “parker” is and what it means to be a “back” when you’re playing parker::
Hmmm… I don’t mind how people point their vehicles as long as their processes aren’t any more disruptive to my processes as the things that other people are doing. The way I figure it, they’re gonna take longer inserting themselves into their chosen parking spot but get out of it faster, so for me, the person waiting for them to do their thing, it kind of breaks even.
Thinking about it, I could see someone doing it at a concert, if they arrive early. Situations where you can predict that the traffic is going to be a shitload worse when you’re trying to leave than when you arrive to park.
I don’t do it myself. Most of the time I’m not in a hurry to leave whatever I’ve just been to.
That’s the value of having a locker room with a boot rack to stash your gear where you can change and keep your boots warm and dry!
You are arguing with toddlers without object permanence who have only tentative driving skills.
Using science to improve their lots is definitely a bridge too far for this crowd.
In the U.S., there are over 12 million collisions per year in parking lots, with 50,000 of them causing injury or death, over 90% of which involve someone backing out of a space. https://www.cpsboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/safety-huddle.pdf et al
Here’s the thing: You’re not doing it “when there is no other traffic coming.” Sure, you’re doing it when there is no “visible other traffic coming” as you’ve said - but if you’re backing out into the traffic lane of the parking lot, you can’t actually see what is coming. So, what’s actually happening is a constant parade of people reversing blind into traffic, hoping not to cause a collision by dumb luck, and failing their gamble at a rate of once every three seconds, every hour of every day.
All of the “I back out into the stream of cars/cyclists/pedestrians/pets and it’s worked out just fine for me” stuff doesn’t fly when you look at how dangerous it is among the driving population as a whole. There’s people who have fallen out of planes without parachutes and survived too - who cares. Statistically, you are doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous for no reason besides the fallacious belief that it saves you twenty seconds. You are one of the small minority that hasn’t caused a collision yet by doing this, and it’s purely by chance.
There’s another thread on the Board about inconveniencing others. No need to discuss it in detail, but I must admit that I feel inconvenienced when drivers back into spaces and I have to walk behind them (or, I guess, in front of them, since they backed in). Backing in deprives the pedestrians passing of seeing the car’s brake lights and reverse lights. These lights make it much easier to tell when the car is about to back out, especially when the back up light is on and the foot brake is released. EVs increase the uncertainty even further because they are so quiet.
And I was also one of those employees who had to pull nose in when I parked in my employer’s parking deck. We do not have front plates in our state and the guards roaming the parking structure looked for unknown or unusual plates. We would get nastygrams on our windshields if we did not park nose in. This was stated in our Facilities Safety Orientation booklet and our orientation sessions.
And, of course, some commercial vehicles small enough to park in lots have back-up warning signals. They don’t sound if you aren’t backing up, but pedestrians walking in front of you may not be aware you are moving forward when they walk in front of the truck.
You cite does not say this. Your cite in fact attributes distraction, in particular related to smartphones, as the cause of parking lot accidents. Not backing out.
Where did you read I think it saves me time?
FWIW I see the pull through maneuver that some love as reckless in that high distraction environment - more than once someone pulling through quickly has nearly hit me pulling into the spot from the lane that the space belonged to.
Sometimes I’m driving our long-bed crew cab pickup. A quick look at any pickup truck should show you that there is much more truck behind the rear wheels then in front of the front wheels.
So backing in has two advantages, it gets more of my truck’s length out of the driving lane, and puts the (slightly) lower end of the truck where neighboring drivers will need visibility when they back (or pull) out.
FTR: I park in the far regions of any lot if possible, and the rear of my truck isn’t hanging over a walkway or sidewalk. And in the (very) rare occasions when my trailer hitch is installed, I place a set of two yellow warning balls back there, one extended to people’s eye-height, the other at roughly windshield height. Hopefully these alert both pedestrians and drivers backing up.
These two things, but I use them both as warnings, I don’t need them for hitch guidance.
Where in that document are you getting that 90% number? Here is a copy-and-paste of the entire document.
Distraction and Parking Lots
LENGTH 2–5 minutes
TO PREPARE Read the background information.
BACKGROUND According to the National Safety Council, as many as 66% of drivers
may be pulling into and exiting out of parking spaces while
distracted.
1 in every 5 crashes occurs in a parking lot or parking garage.
NSC found that at least 60,000 people are injured and approximately
500 people die every year in more than 50,000 parking lot crashes.
Smartphones may be the reason for this alarming trend.
• Texting or talking on the phone is a leading reason for distracted
driving in general.
• The ease one feels in a parking lot may be the reason more
drivers are willing to operate their vehicles while distracted.
• Researchers say slower speeds in parking lots give people a false
sense of security. Even though drivers tend to maintain slower
speeds in parking lots and garages, the consequences of driving
distracted can be devastating.
DISCUSSION Distraction and parking lots can be a deadly combination.
An NSC poll found that as many as two-thirds of drivers may be
pulling into shopping centers distracted.
1 in 5 crashes occur in parking lots.
Pedestrians and children unintentionally left in vehicles are at risk.
What do you think is a leading culprit for distraction?
Smartphones cause the most distraction for drivers, whether they are
talking, texting, checking social media or browsing on a website. The
risk of distraction is deadly.SAFETY HUDDLE
Common Parking Lot Scenarios
A man or woman exiting a vehicle becomes a pedestrian.
• Workers may feel safe walking to the workplace from the parking
lot. However, there may be many other vehicles moving about the
parking lot. Distraction—such as walking to the building while
checking text messages—can cause a worker to miss seeing
these other vehicles.
A driver whose routine has changed may be thinking of the next thing
in his/her day and may inadvertently leave a young child in a vehicle.
Distracted pedestrians also may miss seeing children unattended in
another vehicle in the lot.
• 22% of child heatstroke deaths in vehicles occur at a place of
work.
How quickly can a vehicle interior heat up, even on a cloudy day?
On average, the temperature inside a vehicle increases 19 degrees in
10 minutes.
SUMMARY Even though people tend to drive a lot slower in a parking lot, the
consequences of distraction can be deadly.
People have their heads down; they are on their phones whether they
are behind the wheel or walking through the lot.
If it is “safer”, shouldn’t it also be easier to avoid the retaining wall (neighboring vehicles, etc)? I do not back in mainly because I’m not great at backing. I am sure I could develop the ability to back into my half of our 2 car garage as easily and quickly as I can pull in, but I already have no difficulty backing out.
Yeah, but when I used to drive my Corvair…. 
Safer is based on probability and varies situationally. In this particular circumstance, my driveway is narrow and sloping upward and the retaining wall is low. I can easily see it from the driver’s seat if I pull in, it is not visible if I back in plus I am backing up a hill.
And they’re probably wondering why someone would go that far out of their way to park right next to them, after going to all that trouble to park far away from everyone.
You don’t have better visibility looking out the rear of your car than the front of your car.
Have you never started backing out of a busy parking lot and had a car zip into your lane? Or a family cross over between cars into your lane? Because it happens all the time when I park at Costco or other busy large lots on a weekend.
The idea that it’s better to back out of a parking space because it doesn’t inconvenience someone else for 3 seconds the way backing in would do is mind-boggling. It’s not that I don’t think you’re a very good driver, it’s that all the other people in a parking lot are unreliable. Why take chances?
Disclaimer: I didn’t read the whole thread.
This is the reason I back in to a parking place. Twice a week I attend a class at the local community college and park in one of the ginormous parking lots. When I arrive it’s usually pretty empty, so I back in to a spot. BECAUSE when it’s time for me to leave the lot is full of cars pulling in and backing out (which is bad enough), plus there are swarms of students usually looking down at their phones. Everyone (including me) has a fighting chance of getting out alive and undamaged if I can drive frontwards instead of pulling out backwards.
A few years ago, just as COVID was kicking off (~early 2020), I came out of class and found that someone had bashed in the whole front of my car on the drivers side. No note, no nothing (not that I was surprised). Fortunately I have USAA insurance that paid the $5,000 to fix it, no questions asked. I think my deductible was $200.
A college parking lot is a dangerous place for cars and other living things. The end.