To ask school to choose? (parking)

[Carpark1]

Aibu to ask my DD’s school to choose to alert that they must reverse park. There are no guidelines in the car park and I just feel like it’s mayhem. If we all reversed parked then it may be s bit more streamlined and time saving? Do you think they would find me weird for suggesting it ?😂😬

I’ve been driving for 18 years, never driven in at a supermarket and never had an issue accessing the boot.

So where you live you can get the trolly down the side of the car?
How exactly am I going to get the big bags of compost in between two parked cars, or drive in forwards in this instance so I can reach the boot easily.

So where you live you can get the trolly down the side of the car?

Sometimes. Sometimes not.

How exactly am I going to get the big bags of compost in between two parked cars, or drive in forwards in this instance so I can reach the boot easily

Carry them?!

I reverse park straight in. Very rarely more than one manouvre. And as a PP said... think about when you reverse out and where the driver is sat and how you can't see people walking behind the car. You have none of that. Far safer.

So you expect me to carry heavy bags of compost through a gap that is smaller than the bag of compost rather than doing the logical thing of parking forwards and being able to loads them straight into the boot?

I used to reverse park in smaller cars all the time but never do it now in a big car. Drive every day, park in a car park daily. Driving 20+ years and never had points or accident so think I am plenty safe on the road. If I need to control my car in reverse (if someone has parked out of a bay at work) I can do it but it takes a bit of time.

Reversing into a bay is different from parallel parking and reversing around corners (which I do do) and as it is almost exclusively done off road in private car parks so I don’t see what it has to do with ‘being on the road’

Front and reverse bay parking has only been part of the test since December 2017

Previous to that it was parallel parking and reversing around corners.

So you expect me to carry heavy bags of compost through a gap that is smaller than the bag of compost rather than doing the logical thing of parking forwards and being able to loads them straight into the boot?

Or walk along behind the cars?

I mean if the gap is smaller than a bag of compost I’m not sure how you even got out

Seriously though, by all means carry on driving in for your convenience as many people do. It is less safe than reversing.

and as it is almost exclusively done off road in private car parks so I don’t see what it has to do with ‘being on the road’

Because I imagine someone who is incapable of reverse parking does not have good reversing skills. And I will be the one who reverses back up a narrow country lane 800 metres because the driver I met on the road can't manage to reverse 100metres back to a passing spot.

Well if that is your concern rest assured I can reverse along a road. I frequently holiday in the highlands in areas with single track roads. I am sure I am not as quick as the locals but it is not a problem.

You just get people blocking the way for ages while they reverse in at snails pace and pull in and out straightening up a million times

Only if they are really incompetent drivers.

The reverse is true. Unless the road is very wide or you have a very short car, front parking needs lots of adjustments if you go between two cars.

The same when they pull out.

Whereas reverse parking can easily be done in one go, and pulling out is the most straightforward too.

Pp wanting people at supermarkets to go around their cars with the shopping is just mad.

As with everything, it's a matter of balancing convenience and risks.
There's no way I'll reverse park in supermarkets or at the airport unless there's a passage right behind the cars.
I'm just careful reversing.

Wow your school has a cat park! Round here it's just parking on double yellows, blocking pavements, parking on corners, grass verges. 15 minutes of mayhem before and after school.

@PantsyMcPantsface that's not true. I took my driving test over 20 years ago and it was part of the test then. You were asked to do two manoeuvres out of three in the test - revers parking, reversing around a corner, three point turn.

There are two different types of parking being talked about:

1. parallel parking where you reverse into a space parallel to the kerb. This was added to the test in the early 1990s.

2. bay parking where you park in a bay (oddly enough 😂). This was added in 2017.

Reverse bay parking was introduced prior to December 2017, but forward bay parking was introduced then (alongside the other changes like the new show me/tell me Qs, sat nav portion, and "pull up on the right and rejoin the traffic".)

Ok well I’ll keep you all updated, head wasn’t there on Friday so I’ll approach him on Monday! 🤞

@Treacle

Reverse parking is just practice, My dad took me to a large empty carpark (Tesco after closing on Sunday) and had me practising parking in all the spaces for about an hour. Now it's a breeze and I can't understand why people pull into the spaces forward as it is so much easier to manouvre in reverse.

On MN everyone reverse parks.

This is the rest of the world here.

This is also the rest of the world...🤷‍♀️ 3/5

This is the rest of the world here.

If that's a shop car park, I'm not surprised.
Outside my window in a residential area with two lanes on each side, it's 5/14.
Reverse parking here also means you can access the boot from the safety of the pavement, rather than from the road side.

I'll repeat myself, but it also depends on whether your car has reversing cameras.
I much prefer reverse parking but I actually get much better visibility via rear cameras, even more so when we are talking about little children that I would not be able to see over the bonnet, so it all depends on circumstances.

I drive in forwards for my convenience. When I return I want to wheel the trolley right up to my boot to empty it. I don’t want to leave the trolley at the front of my car where it’s out of arms reach should it roll away, then carry my shopping down a narrow gap at the side, squeeze past someone’s wing mirror and be liable if I break or scratch it, open the boot in a tiny space to load my shopping, and repeat that 3-4 times until I’ve emptied my trolley. Imo the risk of damaging the neighbouring car or the trolley rolling away is greater than the risk of reversing out.

I find it easier to reverse into a space, my DH is incapable of reverse parking 😂 I'm not sure why forcing everyone to reverse park would be more efficient?

our school car park is reverse park only.

With back up camera’s, reverse parking really seems unnecessary.

At a tangent, I’m really bad at forward parking in bay. I have an estate and it’s a nightmare trying to swing in, whereas I can reverse anything pretty much with front wheel steering. Going in a tight space towards I struggle with