There are dozens of tricks to parallel parking successfully. And like with anything that there are dozens of tricks to – how to stop hiccupping, for instance – none of them are 100% reliable. Roads and streets have all sorts of different curves and curbs, and there’s such a variety in types of vehicles and their lengths and widths that nothing’s always going to work. It’s particularly an issue if you don’t have the best instinct for spatial awareness, and are constantly misjudging exact distances and angles. I’ve had that experience too many times to count – having to redo a parallel park half a dozen times because I turned a little too far during one step of the process, or I didn’t gauge the distance properly. It doesn’t help that my car has a nightmarish turning circle. So no matter what tricks you have up your sleeve, the limitations of the situation are almost always relevant.
What are these limitations? Well, you’re in a vehicle, and you don’t know exactly where the limits of the vehicle are. For that matter, you can’t see around corners, so you can’t see where the edges of the vehicle behind you are either. Evolution prepared us for being in bodies, not cars. And if there’s traffic behind you stressing you out, that doesn’t help either.
Best Parallel Parking Equipment
The best way to consistently and easily parallel park isn’t a list of instructions. It’s equipment – a reversing camera kit. Attaching a rear vision camera to your vehicle helps you overcome the limitations of vision and awareness that you normally have to suffer through. Trying to piece together a picture of your surroundings from the fragments you get in your wing mirrors and rear view mirror and head checks is a difficult and sometimes dangerous jigsaw puzzle, and if you don’t get it right the price you pay can be a nasty scrape on your vehicle – or someone else’s. And you don’t want to get a crick from constantly craning your neck.
So talk to Safety Dave and look into getting a reverse camera. It’ll save you a whole lot of trouble and stress in the long run, and it can turn parallel parking from something to dread to just another part of driving. With a camera, you won’t be parking a block away because you’re worried about squeezing into a tight spot. It’s safer, less stressful, and more convenient for you and your passengers.
