Tips for Backing into a Spot, 90 Degree Reverse Parking and Parallel Parking

Reversing. This is one aspect of driving where most drivers could stand to have a little improvement. And there's really very little time (or incentive!) to practice, because such a small fraction of time driving is actually spent backing up. "If the only things I ever do in reverse is back out of parking spots, why should I really bother to improve? I can back out just fine; that's enough for me." While this may be true, having confidence in reversing will help with all aspects of driving. Confidence in itself is a powerful notion, but even taking a little time to think about reversing will do wonders for your parallel parking, as well as for your general awareness and understanding of how your car maneuvers, backwards and forwards.

A good general rule of driving is don't hit anything. When you're backing, you're inherently at greater risk for hitting things, mainly due to unfamiliarity. People have a good idea of where their hood ends, but knowing where your trunk ends is a bit trickier. Now for those people who are spatially gifted and just "know" exactly where all the corners of their cars are and can pull within an inch of any obstacle, you're all set. This is for the rest of us who are stuck guessing, or worse, feeling. A good thing to do is to look at your car from the outside and realize "okay, the end of my car is roughly a foot and a half from the bottom of my back window." If your car has a spoiler, then you have an easy guide as to where you car ends (usually just a few inches beyond the spoiler). If you drive a wagon or SUV, then your car ends a few inches past the back window. Pickup trucks go without saying; they're easy. The worst are cars that have sloped trunks and you really are just stuck guessing. Eventually you will learn to familiarize yourself with whatever you drive, but visual cues like spoilers and windows are always useful reference points.

So how do you avoid hitting things while backing up? Okay, well for starters, realize that you have much larger blind spots when backing up - basically anything low to the ground and close to the rear of your car, you will not be able to see. So be sure to look ahead some distance, and back slowly. Also look to the sides, watching for anything that might be entering that blind spot (e.g. pets, children). This is why you want to turn your head when reversing - mirrors don't give you the same peripheral vision.

People are often afraid of hitting things that they are near, whether they're actually at risk for hitting them or not. You could be sandwiched between cars with 3 inches of space between you and either car, but if you back up in a straight line, you won't hit either because it's physically impossible. Obvious, yes, but physical impossibility is an important concept that is useful for alleviating the worry of hitting things you know you can't hit. So it breaks down like this: if you back up in a straight line, you only need to worry about what is directly and strictly behind you (exception: your wing mirrors may be at risk, so if you get too close to side obstacles beware). If you back up with the wheel turned one way, i.e. left, , you have to worry about things behind you and to the sides of you as follows: your front end swings right, so watch for things close to your front end to your right. Your rear end will swing in to the left slightly, so watch for objects that are to your left and behind your rear left tire.

The more your car body hangs over your rear tires, the more you have to worry about this, and vice versa. What this essentially means, though, is that you physically cannot hit anything to your left that is in front of your rear left tire. For example, when you're parallel parking and you pull up next to the car behind which you want to park, you could pull up so that your rear tires line up with the car-in-front's rear boundary, turn the wheel all the way and back up with no danger of hitting that car whatsoever. This would be true whether you pulled up an inch away or a foot away from it. A note: some may wonder, "where is my rear tire?" True, you can't see it, but you can deduce its location - note that most cars' rear doors have a little indent in their shape to accomodate the rear wheelwells. So your rear tires are just behind your rear doors. Alternatively, you could look at your car and find some reference visible from the inside that helps locate the wheels, such as a pillar that's lined up with the axle or something. Whatever works for you.

One useful tip is that you can imagine that when you have the wheel turned all the way in one direction and you back up a short distance, your whole car will almost pivot on the inner rear tire; that tire is almost stationary. The extent to which this is true depends on your turning radius, but it's a useful generalization. Try it in an empty parking lot - find a line for a parking space, park such that you are maybe 45 degrees skew to the line and such that your inner rear tire is on the line, turn the wheel all the way and back up a little bit. You'll find that that rear tire will stay almost on the line, maybe moving at most a few inches away.

Putting it all together, suppose you want to back 90 degrees into a parking space. You drive maybe 1-3 car widths past the space. Now if you were as good going backwards as you are going forwards, you'd turn the steering wheel the appropriate amount and drive right into that space, and straighten out at the end. Unfortunately, since we don't reverse all the time, our judgment of how much steering a certain turn needs isn't quite as sharp, and most of us can't do it in one deft move. What might work is a "constant adjustment" method, where you make a guess and continually adjust based on "need more steering" or "need less steering" until you end up in the space. What I think may be the easiest way, though, is the following:

Here's the picture. You're driving past cars parked on both sides. On your left, you see a car, a space you want to back into, and then another car. For the sake of explanation let's call the first car A and the second car B. To back into the spot, you drive so that your back end is 2-3 car widths past the space you want, giving yourself plenty of room to work with (as you get better you will require less space). A good aim is to put your left rear tire close (1-2 feet) to car B's left rear corner, and as you're there you're roughly 45 degrees skew to the desired space. To do this, start to turn just a little bit as you back up. But once your rear inner tire is in line with the described target, straighten the wheel and back straight until you hit the target. Never underestimate the power of backing up in a straight line; it's much easier to do than backing up on a curve, not to mention that you have less risk of hitting stuff. It's like if you were told to drive to a distant spot in front of you and to your right.

You'd turn right until the target was straight ahead, then drive straight, right? You would not estimate how much constant steering you need to put yourself on the arc that eventually intercepts the target. Same idea, but backing up. By the way, when backing up and aiming for a point to my left, I prefer turning my head left and looking down the line on the left side of my car - it's a lot easier in my opinion than the classic looking out the middle of my rear window. But once your rear inner tire is on the target, now is the time to cut the wheel all the way to align yourself in the spot. Your rear inner tire is almost stationary, so you'll end up with a tad more space to car B than you start with. You also can't hit B, because now B should be completely in front of your rear left tire. Also, unless you're unexpectedly far from B, you shouldn't be in danger of hitting A unless it's a tight spot. Once you're straight, you just back straight up to your desired position.

On a related note, how does this all apply to parallel parking? I've seen lots of explanations and videos online that give some formulaic procedure for the maneuver...but it's really not as simple as "pull up roughly x feet from the car in front, slowly turn the wheel as you slowly back up until you're 45 degrees, then slowly turn the wheel the other way as you slowly continue backing up and when you're in the spot pull forward to complete the maneuver." I find this really unhelpful because the whole hard part of parallel parking is learning how much to turn the wheel and how long to back up for (is 45 degrees really the angle you want?). Everyone knows what a good parallel park maneuver should look like - so it's obvious that you turn the wheel this way and that and end up smug -er, snug - in the spot you wanted. I'm not a perfect parallel parker, but I know that all the methods I've seen so far don't work for me very well. Here's what I do: think about the goal of parallel parking and how to achieve it.

You want to move your car to a position to the side and parallel to its original position. Rear wheels don't turn, so they don't do the whole "lateral movement" thing very well. Thus, it is critical that you prioritize their placement, and worry about your correctable front end later. If the rear wheels aren't positioned well, correcting them often requires a restart. Where you want to position the rear wheels is almost on the lines parallel to the curb where they will end up. If they are almost there, and then you swing your front end in, the rear wheels will end up just where they need to be. How do you position them in said targets? As you start parallel parking and swing the front end out, remember that you're trying to point the rear wheels at their targets, prior to backing straight until they are on target. Once they're pointed at a reasonable angle, back straight up for a short segment so they're on target.

This is the same idea as before: in the videos I've seen where they tell you to smoothly turn the wheel from right to left, they're assuming that you magically know the correct rate of turning that will put the car on all the right instantaneous arcs that will put the back wheels in the right place. What is this magic turning rate? I don't even know, and I don't know how you could know except by lots of experience and skill. It depends on how fast you're backing, too. This is why I prefer the straight backing segment - it's a lot easier. For very tight spaces, there's much less of a margin for error and you may not have the luxury of having a straight segment, and magically judging is really the only way to successfully park. But for average to large spaces, once your rear wheels are on target, the front end is all that needs correcting, and you just have to watch that the front end doesn't hit the car in front. Remember, if you know you fit in the space, and you're watching to make sure you don't hit the car in front of you, you are not in danger of hitting the car behind you.

These ideas are by no means the best way to do things - they're just my way, the product of tidbits I came up with by thinking about cars too much. If anyone has tips and tricks in the same vein that they'd like to share, I'd love to hear it.