I had a new driving lesson yesterday. Yeah i have been driving for over 15 years and never had to worry about it much, but the parking at my home became a bit tight (smaller space) for me to park a wider and longer body car.
My observation now is the amount of space needed on the road is lesser if you are "backing into" a perpendicular bay than when you are "driving into" a perpendicular bay.
This info is specially useful in narrow lanes and there is a possibility that cars could be parked on the opposite side of your parking area.
Well there is also a good write up I found kind of confirming the same, but the below article gives in perspective of a "Forklift" or JCB kind of vehicle as we call it here and Bruce says its applicable even for a normal car!
The below confirms what I say as while driving backwards we inadvertently concentrate on the back wheels and while driving in to a perpendicular parking bay, we tend to focus on the front wheels and hence find it a bit difficult or may tend to need more space.
Before leaving, I will also leave you with a link to a
parking game present here. Its good one to play :-)
This is a really good question, that brings back memories of when I had
not long past my driving test, and then a few months later, sat a fork
lift instruction and test all in the same day. With a forklift, the
steering is done with the rear wheels, - initially I had great
difficulty in lining up the fork lift with the pallet bay so as to lift a
pallet. The forklift instructor helped me, by giving me a good tip,
which he said also applies to parking a car. Afterwhich manouvering the
forklift and parking cars became very easy, because I was then
consciously aware of what I was trying to do.
The tip is, in respect of a car: Do not concentrate on what the steering
wheels are doing - in a car its the front wheels, but focus on where
and the position of the fixed rear wheels are in respect of where you
wish to position.
You explain, that your finding it easier to reverse into a space -
unconsciously you are focusing on the rear wheels, and simply maneuvering your front wheels to aline up.
Next time you are going to go forward into a space, think of where your
rear wheels are in respect of the parking space. At the point when your
rear wheels are in position to the centre of the space, that is the
point you start turning front wheels - you'll notice that the position
of the front of the car is over shot, almost to the point of hitting the
car parked adjacent to where you want to go, BUT the rear wheels are in
the right place. And as you go forward your steering corrects the nose
of the car.
