My recurring problem is when I head in park against a curb. Whether straight or angled. Even if there are 4 empty spaces on both sides when I park my compact car when I exit the store I find a giant pick-up or SUV parked on one or both sides of me. I am faced with attempting to back out with zero visibility. I have to creep an inch at a time hoping I won’t be hit. In addition the drivers of these behemoths who park in a clearly marked “compact only” space blocking half or more of the driveway. Your quad cab, jacked up, huge tire, F 350 that has never been and never will be off road wanna be monster truck is not a compact!!! The only revenge I can hope for regarding these idiots is when they visit the gas station or have to replace their tires at $500 each.
I look for shade in the summer, if there is a tree and a spot to pull thru I m thrilled.
simple pleasures these days…
If the parking lot aisle that the vehicle is facing is laid out for two-way traffic, using the pull-through opportunity to make departure safer is, in my estimation, the smart thing to do. Where doing it puts you at opposition to traffic flow on departure, however, it’s The Wrong Thing unless you have an amazingly tight turning circle. Nobody has as good a view when backing up as they do going forward, and parking with your vehicle in pull-out instead of back-out mode greatly reduces the likelihood that you’ll end up running into something - as long as the vehicles next to you aren’t a pair of Sprinters that completely block your view.
I can’t think of any parking lots I frequent that have shade. Just hot asphalt. Poor me.
VDCDriver: Many years ago, in Florida, they apparently enacted a law requiring that vehicles always had to be parked with their licence plate visible from the lane - even in malls and other private property. Florida is a one-plate state. I was amused by their idiocy on this score, but could happily ignore it since my Texas-registered car had front and rear plates. I don’t know if that regulation is still on the books down there, and have a less than zero desire to find out. Florida is on my list of places to never go, not even for huge amounts of money - and I grew up there.
even scraggly little Charlie brown trees help…
I just solved the problem. I was watching a train go by a crossing and thought about the double header engines. This eliminated the round house. When the engine is to go the other direction, the crew just climbs in the cab on the other engine of the double header. Let’s make cars that can be driven from either end in the same way. If we go to battery powered electric cars, there could be a traction motor at each wheel. IF we have a breakthrough on batteries, the battery could be in the middle of the vehicle and under the floor. The rear seat passengers would ride backward until the car was driven from the opposite end and then they would become front seat passengers riding forward. Last week, we rode in a regional commuter train from Lancaster, PA to Philadelphia, PA and we rode backward in the coach.
@Evil Wrenchman–You have given me one additional reason to NOT go back to Florida.
Thank you for that information!
Obscured or obstructed vision while backing up is probably the most common cause of parking lot fender benders, and as I see it, the best way to avoid one is to either back in to a stall, or pull through. Not for rows with angle parking 'though, only stalls perpendicular to the driveway. I never pull through if there is another car approaching as he/she may want to park in the facing stall, and to do so is just bad manners, inconsiderate, and may get my car keyed. We back our cars into our garage at home, where “pulling through” isn’t an option. In over 30 years we’ve never had an accident (or even a close call) while a few of our neighbors who pull straight in and back out onto the road, have.
I AM SO LOVE WITH THE BACKUP CAMERAS! I FIND MYSELF 2 OR 3X checking for critters,
I agree, pull through to the other spot, as long as there is no one heading for that same spot. I do it a lot, for the reasons mentioned above.
Re the backup camera, I have one for the first time ('15 subaru forester) and I find it almost useless. In fact I put a gouge in my rear bumper hitting a concrete pillar.
Which brings up the point: is there anything as useless as bumpers on new cars? Or cars with don’t even have one, such as some of the new cars, as seen below.
I do a lot of parallel parking in a city, and my cars usually have hundreds of scratches and gouges in the bumpers within a few years. what would happen to this car:
Welcome @BillRussel. You can easily correct your typos by clicking on the gear that appears to the right of your name, then “Edit.”
with my old 75 supercab I don t pull ahead. it s so long that it sticks out a fair bit. I would rather the old step bumper be hit than the beautiful front end.
insightful:
thanks, I should have seen that. But then I would need to delete my second posting, and that I can’t seem to be able to do.
b
@BillRussell, in cases like yours, if you edited your second post to say “deleted” or something else, I could remove it to reduce the clutter. Or not - up to you.
Yeah, no way to delete a posting I know of. When I need to, I just delete the contents and leave “—” or “Deleted.”
It’s rude to take a space someone has been waiting for, and I’d never pull through into one someone in the other aisle wanted. But there is no general rudeness to it. Rather the opposite. Parking like this makes it quicker and easier for drivers to vacate spaces that others may need. It’s also easier for the driver pulling out to see when there is an open gap to pull into and to make eye contact with someone who might be waiting.
As you can see from one of my earlier posts in this thread, I always “pull through” in a parking lot if it is possible, simply because it is just so much safer to do so, instead of having to back out of a parking space. I certainly don’t think less of people who insist on doing things traditionally, but this issue sometimes gives you the opportunity to see who can “think outside of the box” and who can’t.
Specifically, I am referring to something that I see fairly often:
A person returns to his/her car, and finds that there is nobody parked in front of his/her car. Instead of taking this opportunity to simply drive forward in order to exit, these folks still back out of their spaces!
I have actually seen instances of people whose cars were truly isolated–with no vehicles anywhere near them–who back out of the parking space in which they had been parked, rather than simply put the car in drive and drive ahead in one easy motion.
To my mind, this indicates somebody who is unable to analyze a situation, or who doesn’t even bother to try to analyze it, and who just does what he/she has always done, even if it doesn’t make very much sense. I have a friend who calls this “the quick & dirty intelligence test”.
I always pull through a parking spot if the other space is available. It’s a parking lot after all and that’s what the spaces are there for. My pet peeve is people who don’t pull ahead at a gas station. They stop at the very first pump and block the pumps ahead of them. It makes no sense at all.
“They stop at the very first pump and block the pumps ahead of them. It makes no sense at all.”
+1
I think that Tom & Rays’ expression–Unencumbered by the thought process–explains it pretty well. On a regular basis, I observe that all-too-many people just do things without even knowing why they are doing them.
How about what I call The Supermarket Entry Phenomenon?
You know…you are walking into the local supermarket, where the entry area is fairly narrow, and the person in front of you chooses to come to a dead stop just inside the entry area. I guess that these folks are just so…overcome…with the…grandeur…of Stop & Shop that they lose the ability to walk momentarily. And, of course, everyone following these dead stoppers has to wait until the brain-dead person in front finally gathers his/her faculties sufficiently to be able to walk ahead like a real person.
But, no matter what the reason for their coming to a dead stop might be, the fact remains that it is just plain discourteous to the other folks in back of them.