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© Copyright 1999, Jim Loy
The people who sponsor our pool team have a sign at one side of the building that says "Parallel Parking Only." And, from the painted lines, it is clear that they want you to park nosed in to the curb. They want all of the cars to be parallel to one another. But, parallel parking is actually parking your car parallel to the curb. When parked this way, the cars are nose to tail along the curb, still parallel to each other, but not in the way that people normally think of parallel.
Anyway, I contend that almost anyone can learn to parallel park like a pro. It does take a small amount of eye-hand coordination (not much), and a small amount of practice (not much). And we reject parking spots that are too small. The plan is to pull along side the car in front of the target parking space. And then just back into the parking space, in two smooth motions. These smooth motions are often going to be quite slow. We are not in the Blue Angels, just yet.
OK, here goes. We have just pulled along side the car in front of our parking space. We signalled so the driver behind us knows what we are attempting, and won't come right up behind us. If he/she did come right up behind us, then he/she is out of luck, 'cause we are not moving until he/she gets out of the way. As I said, we have just pulled along side the car in front of our parking space. We want to have our rear bumper about even with the rear bumper of the car on our right. We put our car in reverse and are stopped. We turn our head and shoulders to look backward. It is important to have a good view through the back window and side window. We are going to be aware of the attitude (position and angle) of our car, at all times. It helps to do all this with two hands on the steering wheel. But, we may not be agile enough to do this and still look backward. So, we may have to park with only one hand on the wheel.
We turn the steering wheel hard to the right, as far as it will go. None of that half-hearted turning for us. If we have originally stopped too far forward, we may have to go straight backward for a ways, then stop (until we are good at this), and then turn hard to the right. We now back slowly into the parking spot. This should put the rear end of our car pretty much in the parking spot. The front end is still out in the street.
We now must judge when we have gone far enough, and stop. Are we too far from or too close to the curb? Can we turn the steering wheel hard to the left, and not bump the car in front? If we are way off, we should pull forward, and try all over again. If we are close, we can adjust later.
So, we are stopped with the rear end of the car within a foot or two of the curb. We now turn the steering wheel hard to the left. If we are close to perfect, but too near the car in front, we may have to ease into this hard left turn of the steering wheel. But normally, we want this to start as another hard turn. We now ease slowly into the parking space. We do this slowly, because, as we get into the parking space, this is now the time for fine adjustments. We can ease off of our hard turn, in order to make these fine adjustments.
We are done. Are we too far away, still? Then we may have to go forward and backward to get closer. But, with a little practice, and luck, that won't be necessary.
We don't always do this perfectly. The pros don't. On some days, we may have to try it several times, or go on to a bigger space, or just take the rest of the day off. But, if we parallel park slowly, we should not be very far off. We weren't over-confident. We weren't in a hurry. We watched what we were doing, and were careful.
I hope that helps.
Comment: In the spirit of modern how-to literature, I was going to call this article "Parallel Parking For Vegetables On Life Support." But I didn't want to offend anyone.