Tips on parallel parking
Parallel parking is perhaps the most dreaded part of driving, and certainly the most difficult type of parking. There are a lot of opinions on the web about this often troublesome matter of safely squeezing you and your vehicle into that impossibly tiny spot on Main Street.
DMV.org offers a wonderful guide on parallel parking, laying out helpful pointers from a variety of drivers in a friendly video. You can also learn, should you ever wish to know, how to parallel park like a man (with the final step being, naturally, “do a little jig”) using an uncannily similar set of guidelines from artofmanliness.com. However you may as well get your advice straight from the self-proclaimed “best parallel parker in the world” – who better than he to guide your car to safety?
Based on these many opinions, we at MyParkingSign have developed our own set of guidelines for parallel parking:
- Signal in the direction of the parking spot. Align your front bumper with the car directly in front of your desired space. Come to a complete stop.
- Put your car in reverse, release the break, and turn your wheel sharply to the right – not too sharply, as to avoid hitting the car next to you.
- When your front car door is alongside the back bumper of the car in front of you, slowly turn the wheel to the left.
- Straighten out your car, which should be no more than 6 inches from the curb.
The key to perfect parallel parking is going slowly. That jerk honking behind you can wait and extra 10 seconds.
Some physically disadvantages can seriously hurt your parallel parking skills. For instance, if you are driving while visually impaired (which you shouldn’t be, considering the legally required visual ability for license attainment/renewal), particularly in one eye, your depth perception may be thrown off, which could place your automobile’s back bumper right into the face of that expensive sports car behind you, leading to costly damages at your expense. If you’re having doubts about your vision when it comes to the road, find an optometrist and let him or her decide if it’s safe for you to be driving.