How to teach someone how to back up?!

[cpzilliacus]

Hoo, if you ever drive by a VDOT office or yard, you might notice that all or very nearly all vehicles with state government registration plates are backed-in to their parking spaces.  According to them (not me, though I prefer to back-in most of the time), having vehicles backed-in to spaces means a lot less in the way of backing crashes.

[vdeane]

Hoo, if you ever drive by a VDOT office or yard, you might notice that all or very nearly all vehicles with state government registration plates are backed-in to their parking spaces.  According to them (not me, though I prefer to back-in most of the time), having vehicles backed-in to spaces means a lot less in the way of backing crashes.

Ditto for NYSDOT.

[1995hoo]

Hoo, if you ever drive by a VDOT office or yard, you might notice that all or very nearly all vehicles with state government registration plates are backed-in to their parking spaces.  According to them (not me, though I prefer to back-in most of the time), having vehicles backed-in to spaces means a lot less in the way of backing crashes.

Heh. Given my wife's difficulty backing out of the garage, there is no way I'm going to let her back in anytime soon unless perhaps she's driving the convertible with the top down!

(After watching her drive into the garage, I think a major part of the problem is that she doesn't just drive straight in. For whatever reason, she invariably turns a little to the left, I think because of some stuff we have standing in the far right corner. Then when she tries to back out, her parking at a cockeyed angle only aggravates her tendency to turn to the right as she backs out.)

Since my car is (finally) back from the shop, I've reclaimed the garage for myself, so hopefully this issue won't recur for a while!

[Duke87]

No matter how simply or basically I thought I was stating certain concepts, she didn't seem to be listening - which made me angry. Well, she was able to get across to me that , yes, she was listening but that what I was saying made no sense to her.

This happens to me all the time when I try to give people directions.

"Oh, just walk two blocks west, I'll be right on the corner"
"Um... which way is west?"

I do this without even realizing it's a problem because in my head I think of everything in terms of cardinal directions, and I pretty much always know no matter where I am which way north, west, etc. are. Normal people, however, don't have a compass in their head and telling them "walk west" provides them with no useful information.

[J N Winkler]

1995hoo, it sounds like the problem has been solved, but in case it recurs, here is what I have to add to the good advice given above:

*  I'd present an intensive session in a nearly-empty parking lot as a chance for both of you to rehearse skills already learned and possibly try new techniques.  Parking is one of the few activities where experience and training do not guarantee performance.

*  When she backs up, is your wife following the textbook approach--right hand on back of passenger seat, head turned to the rear, left hand on the steering wheel?  This is textbook because it keeps to the absolute minimum the chances of backing over someone or something that is not or cannot be seen in the mirrors, but it takes a great deal of practice and muscular coordination to avoid feeding unwanted input into the steering wheel while facing away from it, holding it with just one arm, and not being able to tell angle of steer by spoke position.  It is also an excellent way to sideswipe adjacent obstacles and miss cars approaching from the blind direction at speed.

*  In regard to not parking straight in, while that is often a result of insufficiently trained spatial perception, it can also be a result of off-center steering.  Has the car had an alignment done at any point in its history (e.g., when replacing tires)?  If so, was toe-in adjusted equally on both sides to preserve centering of the steering wheel?  Many alignment shops save time by adjusting toe-in on only one side and hoping the customer doesn't notice.

*  Familiarity with the parking area is an important issue when backing up.  Our house has a left-curved driveway, two cars wide, with two cars garaged and the third parked behind the curve on the inside side, so that each of the two garaged cars has to be backed along a curve and through a slot one car wide.  We manage this without difficulty, using the driver-side mirror to judge clearance to the ungaraged car, but the majority of our guests cannot do the same without whipsawing the steering wheel unnecessarily, making more than one attempt to back into the slot, or dropping wheels onto the lawn.  On the other hand, we have responsibility for another house that also has a curved driveway two cars wide, but slightly narrower and bent to the right instead of the left, and backing into a car-width slot (using passenger-side rearview mirror for a significantly less reliable guide to clearance) causes us difficulty on the relatively rare occasions we have to do it.  In both driveways we have great difficulty backing around a car parked on the outside of the curve, since we cannot use an outside mirror on either side to see clear air between the vehicles until we are almost past the point where the reversing vehicle might collide with the parked car.

Hoo, if you ever drive by a VDOT office or yard, you might notice that all or very nearly all vehicles with state government registration plates are backed-in to their parking spaces.  According to them (not me, though I prefer to back-in most of the time), having vehicles backed-in to spaces means a lot less in the way of backing crashes.

I don't think parking practice within state DOT yards necessarily translates well to the wider world.  Most of the people parking there have a common employer and are aware of that employer's preferences with regard to vehicle parking, and are prepared for other cars to be reversing into spaces.  In other parking lots open to the general public, I think reversing into a  space increases the risk of collision between the reversing vehicle and another vehicle seeking either to overtake it or to nose into the same space, and in many cases this increase in risk offsets the reduced risk of collision while the reversing vehicle is aligned with the space and is backing straight into it.

My personal preference is to drive through into an empty space.  When this is not possible, I estimate I nose in two-thirds of the time, and reverse in one-third of the time, which is low frequency by California standards but quite high for Kansas.  In parking lots owned by the City of Wichita, reversing in is expressly forbidden by municipal ordinance and signs are posted to this effect.

[spooky]

A woman? Might as well just widen your garage door(s).

[cpzilliacus]

Hoo, if you ever drive by a VDOT office or yard, you might notice that all or very nearly all vehicles with state government registration plates are backed-in to their parking spaces.  According to them (not me, though I prefer to back-in most of the time), having vehicles backed-in to spaces means a lot less in the way of backing crashes.

Heh. Given my wife's difficulty backing out of the garage, there is no way I'm going to let her back in anytime soon unless perhaps she's driving the convertible with the top down!

(After watching her drive into the garage, I think a major part of the problem is that she doesn't just drive straight in. For whatever reason, she invariably turns a little to the left, I think because of some stuff we have standing in the far right corner. Then when she tries to back out, her parking at a cockeyed angle only aggravates her tendency to turn to the right as she backs out.)

Have you (and her) ever considered having someone mild-mannered work with her a little on her backing skills?

[cpzilliacus]

A woman? Might as well just widen your garage door(s).

I disagree.  In terms of gender, the worst drivers on the roads (and driveways) are male.

[Brandon]

A woman? Might as well just widen your garage door(s).

I disagree.  In terms of gender, the worst drivers on the roads (and driveways) are male.

I'll disagree again.  I've found both to be equally deplorable.  It's merely that men tend to drive more often than women.

[Scott5114]

A woman? Might as well just widen your garage door(s).

That's sexist.

[Brian556]

Blind spot mirrors help with backing. One significant advantage is that they allow you to see the ground beside the vehicle, including the edge of the pavement or pavement markings.