Time for a Rant!

Twice lately I've nearly been rammed by a car leaving a parking space.  I'd just filled up at a service station, and in order to re-join the carriageway I had to pass a stationery 7.5-tonne lorry.  As I drew level with the cab I was confronted by the fast-approaching rear end of a BMW saloon.  This was the first time I'd used this particular filling station, and I was unaware that, just beyond the place chosen by the lorry-driver to leave his vehicle, there was a row of parking spaces, one of which had been occupied by the BMW.

Only days later, I left home early in the morning and was forced to use my horn out of hours when a car reversed out of a gate in front of me as I drove down the next street.  It's time to return to a theme I first voiced soon after I began this blog - Reverse Parking.  I suppose it's partly due to the speed of life these days that probably 4 out of 5 motorists drive straight into a parking space, get out of their vehicle - hopefully locking it - and dash off to execute the business for which they parked.  There's also an element of selfishness, too, for few if any of these folks will have considered the effect that their behaviour will later have on the convenience or safety of other people - or their own, come to that!

The design of the motor vehicle is not readily compatible with the act of driving out of a parking space, once the driver has driven forwards into it - especially as this is often done without making any adjustment to either the position of the vehicle or the angle of the driving wheels once the end of the bonnet has reached the far end of the space. The fact that the steering bit is at the front means that the process of reversing out is hampered by not being able to manoeuvre the vehicle until it's almost entirely out of the space.

Usually a degree of shunting is necessary to get either into or out of a parking space so, I ask, why not carry this out in the most favourable and most beneficial way?  Earlier this year, while on holiday, I saw someone go round and out of a car park because there wasn't room to drive forwards into the only empty space; I followed him, and reversed my larger saloon into the space at the first attempt.

Apart from the matter of steering, the benefits of reverse parking are many.  Take first the question of safety.  When you approach the parking space, you are already aware of the surrounding traffic situation: you know which other vehicles are moving, and where they're going.  Advantage can be taken of this information in order to reverse safely into a space.  If you drive straight in, your later attempt to leave will necessarily make you more vulnerable.  It will be conducted when you have to assess the behaviour of other vehicles either before you get into the car, by which time the situation may well have changed; or from a driving position where your vision is restricted by adjacent cars, and where the possibility of eye-contact with other drivers is almost non-existent. 

There's also the matter of fuel economy - an all-important consideration when prices are constantly increasing!  Manoeuvres carried out with a warm engine will use less fuel than the same tasks carried out with a cold one.

Planners don't help in coping with this dilemma.  At the filling station where I encountered the BMW the spaces are laid out at an angle - so-called 'echelon parking', which is necessary where there is less space between a wall or pavement and the flow of passing traffic - but the usual direction of this angle means that you have to park in the direction of travel, and reverse out into the flow of traffic.  The same system was adopted when the centre of my home town was re-designed a short while ago.  As a van driver, I find these spaces virtually unusable for, in addition to the foregoing considerations, my rear vision is severely restricted, and the only way to emerge is simply to 'hope and go', relying on the alertness, consideration and generosity of other drivers - which is by no means a universal commodity! 

For the reasons I have outlined, it would have been better if the echelon parking had been laid out in the opposite direction, so that drivers reverse in and drive out, but planners are hardly going to consider safety and fuel economy when the majority of the driving population are set in their habits of 'drive in, stop and run away', and give no thought to the essential aftermath.

I was heartened, the day after the second of the two events with which I began this post, to make a delivery at an establishment where the car park was plastered with notices saying "This is a reverse parking only car park".  The car park was almost full, and not a single boot could be seen, only radiator grilles.  IT CAN BE DONE! 

A friend of mine watched me parking recently and commented, "That's something I've never been able to do!"  To him, and any readers who feel the same, I would say, "Just practise!"  Borrow some traffic cones, stick a post into an old plastic bucket, or bribe some  friends who can jump and shout.  Find a deserted space, believe that you can do it, and just practise.  See just which bit of your car you have to get lined up with the corner of the adjacent vehicle, or of the parking space, and practise!