Parking Advice

[justacritic]

Hello, I'm learning to drive and I am encountering difficulty with reverse parking. I am able to manage to end parallel more or less, but I have trouble staying within the yellow parking lines.
Does anybody have any advice or tricks they use? Thank you

[Aisha deCabre]

Heh, funny, I had to learn to drive just this year around the end of summer, and backing up was one thing I was never good at either.

Really, it takes practice in knowing what angles to start turning and the feel of the car, etc., for it to be any good.  Going somewhere deserted and driving backwards until I could turn accurately anywhere helped me.  And I used the mirrors instead of looking behind constantly...besides, there's no rule against going out and trying again if you don't get it the first time.

And now that I can drive, I only ever drive backwards when backing out of a space. I feel more comfortable there than having to turn around and back in the first time around, really.  But, everyone has their thing.  See what you're comfortable with.

[rabid_fox]

If you're a man, you'll get it soon enough. If you're a woman, get a man.

[Sofox]

My Mum gave me this trick:

For a start, you'll overshoot the parking space, and reverse into it. When you are reversing for the first time; you'll obviously be turning to the left to start with to move your rear end into the space, and then turning to the right to try to align the car into the space once you're far enough into the space.

Assuming you get your bumper behind the parked care in front of you, you'll now be in the space, but no perfectly parallel (indeed your right side may be sticking out into the road still and... wait, do you use left or right side roads? Damn it, I'm explaining this for left side roads with you parking on the left side because that's the side I know best)
So the question now is aligning your car perfectly.

Here's the trick.
When you were reversing, you were turning to the right. Just before you stop reversing, turn the wheel fully to the left. Then when you stop and are in the space (misaligned though), drive forward, with the turning left ensuring that you are properly aligning the car. Now just as you are about to stop in front of the car ahead of you, turn the wheel fully to the right, then stop, and reverse. The key here is to always turn the wheel in the direction you intend to have it in when you change direction. By doing this in advance, you are about to make better turns. Repeat this enough times and you should align yourself fine in the parkings space. This trick works any time you have to change direction in a car, especially for instance if you are manuvering around a cul de sac or other awkward area..