To me, it seems objectively easier to pull into a parking space forward and then back out of the space when you are ready to leave. You don’t have to line up with the lines while driving backwards, and it’s easier to keep from hitting other cars as well. So why back in? To me, the only advantage I can think of is that you can get out quicker, technically.
Edit: I do not need driving instruction, just wondered why. The reasoning.
All sorts of crazy stuff happens in parking areas. When someone pulls kamikaze-style parking maneuvers, you a really don’t want that to happen behind you where it’s difficult to see what’s going on.
My current car is my first car that has a backup camera, and I actually find it much easier to see backing out of a space with the camera’s wide field of view.
Driving forward, especially in a sensible normal-sized sedan, your view can easily be blocked by someone’s giant Suburban on your left and Billybob’s overcompensating pickup truck on your right, both of which always come with shit parking jobs. Your best chance is to very slowly inch forward and hope any oncoming drivers notice the front of your car moving into the lane before your windows clear the taller vehicles.
But the backup camera sees 180 degrees from the bumper, so you can always see traffic in both directions well before any part of your car might get in anyone’s way.
I can’t imagine a reverse camera being a better alternative to looking out the front windscreen - sure it being a bit further forward then your seating position and wide angle might give it a bit extra visibility around close objects, but it definitely does not offset the advantage of a natural ~200 degree field of view - and that is before you move your eyes or swivel your head. This is much much more valuable particularly for faster moving objects (which are a greater problems).
That said I may be biased because my current vehicle has rear front and side cameras so I get the best of both worlds!
Hondas have 3 views, at least on my 2020 Civic and wife’s 2023 HRV.
“Wide” is for checking for vehicles, pedestrians, etc. when your view is obstructed on the sides (it’s probably more like 178, but I can see at least 200 ft down the sidewalk in both directions when backing out of my driveway, including beyond my neighbor’s overgrown bushes.) The picture is skewed on the sides though.
“Regular” is undistorted for maneuvering and seeing directly behind you. This is like the default mode you’d expect to see.
“Top-down” shows about 3-4 ft of the pavement below/behind the car for backing up close to walls, parking barriers, other parked cars, etc.
You change them with touchscreen buttons. All of them have guidelines and distance markers that move with the steering wheel.
My jetta has 120 degree view camera, but 180 degree object sensor, and the sensor literally screams at you before the camera can even process the visuals
You certainly have more visibility when leaving but you have less visibility when backing into a confined space.
I am on the fence on this. Our office had zero accidents in fifteen years diving in but three backing in dings in the three years since encouraged. Hit a Bobcat, hit a trailer and hit one of the employee trucks.
On the fence because possibly it is more of our office. There is no thru traffic as a private location and there is a fair amount of room to back out where as the parking is relatively tight.
When backing into a spot, you can predict that there shouldn’t be anything behind you. But you should always check your blind spots. I kind of cheat though because I have a backup camera
Possibly it is statically better when dealing with busy and tight parking locations. Ie. Malls or tight office complexes etc. Might be no benefits in low traffic locations where the yard is large enough that strait in driving is easy and backing out is into a fairly open space. Such as my location.
My guys choose to do back in parking after the oil industry started to suggest it in safety meetings. I didn’t really care what option they chose but with the three accidents in a short period, no longer sure backing in is safer in all situations.
i have legitimately never heard a single positive thing about HOAs. i don’t think they exist in australia?… like we have owners corporations and stratas but i think they don’t have nearly the same power
Honestly, they're kinda stupid and should have a mandatory end or review date, mine has stupid clauses like you can't park a commerical vehicle within visibility of the street and restricts the material used for fencing etc
It’s so they can repossess your car if you’re behind on payments or don’t update your registration after it expires. They literally hire a towing company to drive around the parking lot and look for vehicles to take. I don’t understand why the HOA cares.
I can line up with my side mirror and back in almost just as quick as I can pull in, and then I don’t have to potentially back into traffic and risk some asshole flying up on me without me expecting it or hitting a pedestrian.
Also, I drove ambulances for a long time. You always always always back emergency vehicles in. 1. To always be prepared to respond 2. Scene safety. It’s absolutely drilled into our heads from day 1 of EMT school that you are able to leave a scene faster than you got there if something goes very wrong very quick.
So many years of backing an ambulance in to park everywhere I went and I don’t even think about backing my tiny ass Honda into a spot now. It feels incredibly wrong not to.
The difficulty is exactly the same and the visibility is much better when leaving the space. Reversing isn’t any harder than driving forwards, especially if you have a backup camera, many people are just unskilled or have low confidence
Driving forwards and driving backwards are separate skills that both require practice, but one is not harder than the other (only applicable at slow speeds).
For one thing, people are practicing driving forward 99.9% of the time they’re driving a car, so even if it were true that they were equally easy, most people would be much better at driving forwards.
But, it’s obviously not true. Cars are designed around going forward. There’s a huge windshield to look out of, the seat faces forwards, etc. Driving backwards is simply a more difficult activity. It requires using mirrors and/or a backup cam. The seat stays oriented forward, and as animals with front-facing eyes, we’re not as comfortable moving backwards as forwards. In addition, the steering wheels are on the wrong side, so instead of aiming the steerable part and letting the unsteerable part follow, you have to orient the steerable part to push the non-steerable part around.
If you’re familiar with the skill of reversing, reversing isn’t any harder. Hmm. Ok. If you’re familiar with landing a plane, then landing a plane isn’t any harder either.
Actually landing a plane is a lot harder than reversing a car even if you’re skilled at it. Not sure what you’re trying to prove, this is a dumb argument
Obviously reversing is harder, and adding the tag “if you’re familiar with the skill” doesn’t change anything. I added “if you’re familiar with landing a plane” to make that point.
Reversing literally isn’t harder than driving forward.
Of course it is. Don’t be dense. Going forward there’s a huge windshield for you to look through with both eyes so your binocular vision gives you full depth perception. You’re moving in the direction you’re facing. The wheels that can’t be steered follow the wheels that can so you don’t need to think about them because they’ll always just follow.
Compare that with reversing where you’re facing forward but moving backward. You can only get a small, incomplete picture of where you’re heading using either small mirrors or a low-resolution camera. You can try to rotate in your seat if you have a useful back window, but even if you do it’s far away and so most of your view to the rear is going to be blocked by the car’s interior. In addition, you’re pushing the non-steered wheels with wheels that are steered, so that small movements of the steered wheels are amplified, so you have to be much more careful about where you’re pushing them.
There’s no question that driving backwards is harder than driving forwards.
It’s easier to back into the space and it’s easier to drive out of it. The question should be why do people drive forwards into parking bays and then struggle to back out?
the easy part of driving is manoeuvring the vehicle… the hard part is dealing with shit drivers… reversing out is reversing into an unknown situation on a high(er) speed road full of shit drivers
So you are imagining parking spaces along a road, or perhaps a driveway connected to a road? I’m imagining a parking lot or parking garage. I should have been more specific. I’m thinking of parking lots only. This is not a road.
parking spaces like that too: they’re not high speed, but people are often distracted, there are pedestrians wandering around… lots of unknowns you’re reversing into
and you’re looking from the front of your car out toward the back of your car, where you vision is often blocked on either side… worst case scenario you have a truck either side of you in which case you literally can’t see more than a few degrees angle past the back corner of your car in either direction
Same here. I have no idea what everyone is talking about. Backing in is so much more stressful and not doing it has literally never caused me a problem.
Because self center assholes walk behind me when I am in the middle of backing out, then get mad because I almost hit them. All this from a handicap parking spot.
I mostly pulling forward. Sometimes there is a smaller and packed parking lot, where the turn radius of my vehicle will not make it into a spot going forward. It could be done but I’d have to spend an extra 10 min to Austin powers my way into a spot going forward and then do it again backing out. In cases like that I find it much easier to have the turning point of my vehicle in the drive lane so I can have a better swing to line myself up and back in. It’s just better for everyone in that scenario.
There are cities that still have laws on the books that state you cannot back out of your driveway. Obviously not enforced but the reasoning is there. At the grocery store, I don’t back in because it becomes a pain in the ass to get to your trunk, everywhere else, yeah I back in. It’s safer.
Grocery parking annoys me because it’s also one of the more congested parking lots I have to deal with. Not being able to back in makes leaving a pain.
If you look at the state driver’s manuals from the dmv it actually says exactly that. It’s already considered a privilege. Otherwise you wouldn’t have to test into it and pay annually to keep your car on the road.
I actually like cars. (They’re… “cool”. I play Forza sometimes, lol.) But the reality is they’re fucking expensive to maintain, along with insurance and taxes and fuel. And very much not fun to drive under normal circumstances, next to removeds and idiots. And terrible for the environment, at absurd US numbers at least.
I’d rather save thousands of dollars and have public transit or easily maintained bike. But bikes are not viable when planet is trying to kill us (Texas is 100-110 °F for 2 months straight now).
Those are all things you need to pass to get your driver’s license here in The Netherlands. We still have idiots on the road. Granted, they don’t (or at least, very rarely) slam their vehicles through the fronts of stores and houses, but we still got idiots doing idiot things.
Agreed. I’m the era before every car had a camera, I’d back into my driveway because foggy windows plus backing up sucks. I still back into my driveway even with all of the current day features on my vehicle - it’s just less stress in the morning to pull forward.
Zero traffic would mean it’s an empty lot. If there’s a curb or cement blocks preventing pull through, I’d still back into a spot.
But to answer the spirit of your question, it’s easier to back in to a confined spot due to the steering being on the “back” side and ability to use the side mirrors to line it up. Other than pull through spots, I can’t think of a single good reason to pull in to a parking spot forwards rather than back in.
I agree it can be easier. I prefer it if the spot I am backing into is tight. When I say zero traffic I should clarify to mean it is very unlikely to have another vehicle in motion within your yard when you are parking/leaving.
Tbh cause its objectively not, backing up your point of rotation is the part that gets parked first. Gibes a lot more time to manuvure the front into place once the back is done
This. Absolutely. If the parking lot is small it might be impossible to park in forward - well, not really impossible but it is if you want to avoid Austin Powers like three point maneuvers.
I got in the habit of backing into parking spaces after I had a car that needed a jump start, but I had pulled in and no spaces next to me were available to pull the jumper car into. If you back in, in the rare chance you need a jump start, you will be able to drive the jumper car close to your battery
I find it easier. It’s also safer, backing out of a space you’re more likely to hit someone walking or driving past. If you find reversing in to a space hard then maybe you shouldn’t be driving a giant metal death machine.
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