Please please tell me how you parallel park!

[mollibu]

Hi all.

Could you please share your secrets of how you parallel park??

I just cannot get the hang of it and I'm tempted to find a driving instructor just to have a few lessons on parallel park!!

Please help hahah. Thanks xxx

For some reason I'm better with smaller spaces. :)

You need to keep practicing. Go out and do it just to practice even if you don't need to park.

But, don't be afraid of stopping in the middle of parkin and reposition your car out on the road to start it over again. It can work better than doing many corrections when the car is already in a bad position mid parking.

I'd book a lesson with a driving instructor. It worries me that people who have passed a driving test can't parallel park to be honest. The skills you use with parallel parking are used in other areas of driving, estimating distances, angles etc. I passed my test years ago - does it get tested now (I can't remember if it did when I was learning), maybe it should be core component of the test.

Reversing cameras 🤣

I drive on the right so hopefully I've reversed my instructions correctly. Im a shit driver but an awesome parker.

Start really close to the car in front and parallel with it.

Turn wheel as far to the left as possible. Start to reverse.

When the right corner of your back windscreen is half way across the car behind, turn the wheel hard the other way.

Straighten wheel at the end to avoid the pavement.

You should fit perfectly into the space.

My instructor spent about 15 minutes on it, that was all, knew it wouldn't come up in the test.

I can reverse into a bay no problem, rest of my driving is fine, I just always find parallel parking is on a busy road so I'd be hooking up traffic and getting stressed, plus I have a mental block about scraping the car I'm parking behind as I manouver in

If you have a toddler with a ride in car thing then try parking that (just by turning wheel thru window obviously not by trying to get in it )
It will help you see how much you turn the steering wheel and the angle needed.

Practice practice practice - when I lived in London I was great at parking, now I've lived in the countryside for 8 yrs I'm awful at it.

Move to the Golden Triangle, Norwich. You will have to parallel park every single day of your life and will have no other choice but to get good at it voice of bitter experience. Failing that, best general advice I got was to steer fast, drive slow. Plus stay calm and persevere, no matter how many times you have to do the turn to get in. Good luck, you'll get there in the end, if I can anyone can.

Sometimes I can // park first effort in seconds like magic, sometimes it takes more than 10 minutes of trying. Even though I follow the same instructions in my head each and every time. I get stabby rage at people who say they can "teach anyone" to easily parallel park. I have a bad coordination & no sense of rhythm, so I can't be consistent in how I do it.

My wife can't park for toffee

So we bought a car that does it for her.

If you really struggle it might be worth thinking about. Plenty of models do it now, and not all are that expensive

FWIW it's quite hard especially for us women who are a little bit more shit at getting into parking spaces than men.

I wish you well and hope you pass your driving test, but it took me the best part of 5 years after passing my driving test to master bloody parallel parking!!!

Luckily, on my test (when I passed,) I was asked to do a reverse around a corner. Thank fuck.

This might depend on your type of car.
In teh driving seat look over your left shoulder. If you can see the back wheel arch then that is the important bit as that is the wheel that whole car pivots around (In theory). So pull up a couple of feet from the car beside you so that the wheel arch is level with the back of that car. Start moving back slowly, looking over your shoulder, when that wheel/wheelarch is just past the end of the other car swing the steering wheel down to the left and you will be looking at the area behind and the pavement.
Look in your left mirror and once the wheel (arch) is half way to the pavement start turning the steering wheel the other way so you can see the edge of the pavement you are moving towards in that wing mirror, continuing to move slowly back. Once the wheel is near the pavement, again you can see this in your wing mirror if you have it tipped down enough, straighten up the car by turning hard the other way (still slowly moving back).
I keep my left wing mirror in a position so I can see the pavement and therefore know if I am 3 inches or 3 feet from it. You might have to tilt your mirror down before you manoeuvre.
Practice practice practice is the answer.

Pull up next to the car in front of the space.
Reverse back until the pillar of my front window is aligned with the back of that car.
Steer hard and reverse into the space, using your mirrors to judge how far you are from the kerb and the car behind.
Gently steer in the opposite direction and slowly move back into the space. Don't stop using your mirrors.
This only works on my car because I've worked out where the "pivot point" is. It will be in a different spot on your car, but once you've worked it out, parallel parking becomes much easier.

I do it by pressing a button and taking my hands off the steering wheel, letting the car steer itself. It takes a bit of practise to use the self-parking feature, instead of watching your surroundings you have to watch the display in front of you, as you are in charge of switching between going forwards and backwards, and if you do the opposite of what the car is telling you to do it might end badly. (Think the automatic emergency braking saved me on at least one occasion when I was first getting to grips with this.)

Despite living in London, I hardly ever have to parallel park, so my skills have atrophied. (When I first learned to drive I live somewhere where I did need to do it regularly, so there was a time when I was good at it.)

My wife can't park for toffee. So we bought a car that does it for her.

Which cars park for you?

That first diagram... I was taught never to 'dry steer', i.e. turn your wheels when you are not moving. It scrubs the tyres and is bad practice. And I'm not sure about parking as close as you can to the car in front, I can get within an inch!

Great tips elsewhere

Which cars park for you?

Mine is a VW Golf. (Though it's a feature you pay extra for.)

My driving instructor used to say 'back to back back end in, mirror to back front end in'
So when you are pretty much alongside the car you are trying to park behind turn your wheel to get your back end in and then when your mirror is level with the back of that car turn your front end in and straighten up. It mostly works.

There was something on tv once about using maths in everyday life without thinking about it. The presenter, Carol Vordeman, stated that reversing in at an angle of 30° would do it every time.

many Fords have auto park

I've never had a problem with PP or reverse parking - but I hate pulling forward into a space - find it hard to judge !

Cars with Park Assist systems in place do it for you.

One day I will have one of those. Until then I will continue to avoid parallel parking. I would rather park some distance away and walk than do it. I can do all other types of parking. I can even reverse in pretty well, but I cannot parallel park.

When I passed my driving test, the manoeuvre I got was a parallel park! And I passed with 0 minors. So I don't know what's different but I just can't seem to do it... either that or I take about 10 mins attempting it.

Thanks again for the suggestions. Will put some to the test and see if it works out for me.

Pull up next to the car in front of the space, start reversing and turn steering wheel one full turn into the space then as your front comes past their bumper full turn the other way.

Book an instructor to do it in your car..

My instructor had stickers on the windscreen so that when a certain part o car in front was at the sticker that was when I did the full wheel turn the other way - perhaps they can set one up for you in your car.

I drive to the space, start to reverse in, decide it's too small (rarely is though TBF) and find a space I can drive straight into... I'm a crappy, crappy Parker! I only passed my test in January and have mostly avoided having to do parallel parking and reverse into a bay....

I'm still amazed I actually parallel parked well enough to pass my test

luckily where I live I can survive without parallel parking. Might have to walk a bit further sometimes but I can do with all the extra exercise I can get!