to ask why people don’t reverse in?

[Divorcedalongtime]

to parking spaces…
i know the safest is to reverse in and
drive out, so why do 95% of all cars drive in?
every time I go shopping I see cars desperately trying to get out of their parking bay with cars and walkers going past, whilst if they had reversed in they would get out so easily.

it makes zero sense.

I always reverse in to my drive way or if we are just going to the cinema or for a few bits in town where I know I can throw stuff on the back seat and leave.
If food shopping it’s just easier to drive in so I have easier access to the boot. So if I need to open boot I tend to drive in…
nothing worse than reversing in and coming back to a car parked closely on both sides and having to leave a shopping trolley at front of car and walking back and forth to get shopping (trolleys tend to roll off or into your car or someone else’s!)..
Also when I had my DD in a pram I once reversed in and then couldn’t get behind the car enough to get pram out of boot. Once I came back and the car parked behind was so close I couldn’t even open my boot without it hitting their car… I had to leave trolley in road, pull out, load car with it hanging out.

prescribingmum · Today 07:33pm

Could you link the other thread here? I've trawled through loads of pages on Chat and AIBU, with no success.

Driving in and reversing out makes more sense if you focus on the driver's experience rather than pedestrians. Driving in forward and reversing out is easier for most drivers (or at least, no harder). It's more convenient if you need access to your boot. It's also safer when leaving as if another driver steams into your car it's the boot and rear seats which will take the brunt of the impact, rather than the engine and driver's door. There's less chance of the driver being injured, less chance of anyone in the car reversing out being injured, because there's not always anyone in the back seats but there's always at least one person in the front.

Obviously there is more danger to other pedestrians if a driver reverses out because they're less likely to see them, but most people don't give a damn about anyone other than themselves so this element doesn't matter much.

I have ADHD, driving in forward is quicker & easier, reversing out is a problem for later me! 😆
but also...
shopping - access to boot
school pick up - always nearly full when i get there and by the time i leave (pick up from lower school & the preschool) mostly empty, so easy to reverse out with much less danger of clipping someones car ( as lets face it, spaces arent really wide enough for modern cars!)

I think you're conflating what a person finds easier, with what geometry says takes less space, and the two are not the same?! Ease of doing something is a personal perception. It can't be 'wrong'. They would be wrong to assert it needs less space perhaps, but not to say they find it easier.

I disagree. Error rates can be measured. They aren't perceived, they are observed. You can wire people up and put them in a lab and see how often they make errors of judgment in various spatial awareness tasks. Psychologists have been doing this for years. It is possibly to prove, objectively, that some tasks have higher or lower error rates than others, and to establish the conditions which make those tasks easier or harder. Surprisingly ... when driving, the time elapsed since you last ate is a relevant factor. Who knew?

What isn't straightforward is to objectively quantify how the subject feels about their performance. Especially when the accuracy of their performance is self-assessed, and doubly so when there isn't a counter-factual. There won't be many people who alternate between forward and reverse parking and keep a spreadsheet to track how many times they almost scraped the car beside them or nearly ran over a child. But if there were any such people, I am near 100% certain that their data would show that reverse parking is both easier and safer, and any differences in perceived difficulty are likely to be the result of cognitive bias or delusion. People get stuck in their ways and don't like being confronted by evidence that they are wrong. Even when they are.

Who would have imagined there were so MANY unassailable reasons for going in forwards? 😀

I still don't really understand why going in forwards is so dreadful. If we were serious about pedestrian safety we'd have banned SUVs years ago.

I hate going in forwards. It always seems trickier to me and far harder to line up right. I've parked 6 times today and given this a lot of consideration. I can reverse in in one go nearly every time. Going forwards would be at least 3 if I wanted to get straight in the bay.

Because idiots always park like they’re trying to get into my boot so I can’t open the boot without first moving the car forward a bit then risking another idiot coming along and relocating my front bumper….

It’s easier to just drive in then I can roll my trolley next to the boot, load up, put trolley away then go. Reversing out isn’t much bother. People are happy to let you out because they can then nab the free space.

Well if everyone reversed in you could reduce the space between rows to compensate...

But nose first at the shops means you're standing in the 'road way' area and cars are driving passed you as you unload your shopping.

I reverse in, and take the trolley to the boot, some carpark shave pavements/walk ways between the rows of cars, so it's really easy to access the boot when you've reversed in.

"Turning circle is tighter in reverse. Unless a 4WD.

If you can drive in makes sense as easier getting out "

It absolutely is not. You are much more likely to clip the car on either side of you if you park nose first and reverse out.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4772298-someone-reversed-into-my-car-in-a-car-park-then-drove-off

I agree with you and pretty much do the same - always park where there is a walkway behind so can reverse and access my boot. I hate it when I’m surrounded by 2 high sided vehicles and driving forwards out of a space - not a chance I want to be doing that in reverse!

Someone unthread said about current me not worrying about future me’s problem. My personality is the total opposite - will do almost anything for things to be easier later

@MarvellousMonsters But nose first at the shops means you're standing in the 'road way' area and cars are driving passed you as you unload your shopping.I reverse in, and take the trolley to the boot, some carpark shave pavements/walk ways between the rows of cars, so it's really easy to access the boot when you've reversed in.

And if the car park has no walk way and the spaces between cars is less than the width of the trolley and is barely wide enough for a human? What do you do then?

You can debate whether your likely to clip people or not. That’s a personal perception/ driving issue. The physics here and not debatable. Turning circle is sharper in reverse.

prescribingmum · Yesterday 19:40

Thank you!

😃

Again with this, even in lab conditions, you'd be making a generalisation about a population based on a sample. Who comprises that sample will inform the data. You can't trust a survey that claims 97% of people love filling in surveys.

There's some argument to say the people who prefer driving in forwards are genuinely better at doing it that way than they are at reversing, and that's informed their preferences? No one would prefer to do something that damaged their car or others' regularly. They would however prefer to do the thing that gets them in the space in one, rather than driving back and forth a bit before giving up and driving off to find another space, which I've observed.
So you will potentially find a thread with a debate of this nature collects the statistical outliers who are better at driving in forwards, and actually drive out checking their blind spots and at a sensibly slow speed.

Going to wade in just so you have the numbers to illustrate why - use of the boot. If I’m shopping and need to load up the boot, I drive in so there is access to the boot. If it is a quick trip, no boot use, then I back in Simple as that.

Where I walk the dog it is best to reverse in to park as it’s a narrow dead end lane and the chances are someone will park behind you and make life really difficult to get out. They still don’t, I find it odd.

Wow I’m awed by the amount of interest this thread got and still seem to have.
and it made it to Facebook, never had that happen before,
thanks all!

I agree. Always reverse park except in a supermarket and then only if I can't find a spot that backs onto a walkway.

Saw a mid-life-crisis man in an Audi pretend-Porsche nearly get hit while reversing out of a parent & child space at Sainsbury's this evening (he didn't have a child in the car). Someone had parked an SUV next to him so he couldn't see if any vehicles were coming as he reversed out.

Reversing into main roads is illegal, not sure about side roads though