Reverse in, drive out: It's time to get parking right, for good

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000
Automotive

A sermon for the selfish parker: Your 'nose-in' habit is driving everyone (and you) mad

You never have to look very far in this country of ours to find examples of both good and bad parking, but would you be prepared to get a bit moralistic about it, I wonder, and be prepared to call them right or wrong?

I think perhaps it's time. Cars are getting bigger, yet parking bays don't seem to be. Car parks are getting busier, so you're less likely to find banks of empty bays.

It's more and more likely to matter, in short, if you park well.

And cars themselves are actually getting less forgiving of bad parking habits. As a departure point, we must all agree, surely, that the path of the righteous is backwards.

Indeed, at our regular testing haunt, Horiba MIRA proving ground, you will find car parks replete with signs reminding you to reverse park.

Why? For one thing, if you reverse, your steered axle is at the right end of the car to help you finish up in the middle of the bay, with a car positioned and aligned just right to give you room to open the doors.

You're actually less likely to need a second or third bite at the cherry. More importantly, when subsequently leaving the bay, you can see where you're going much better, so you're also a lot less likely to cause a collision. It's bulletproof logic.

There are places where you may prefer to park nose-in for access to the boot: the supermarket, the recycling centre, that flatpack furniture place.

Also, some cars actually oblige you to park forwards: EVs with charging ports on the front, for instance (the Kia PV5 is one of them).

Fair enough on both scores; I'm prepared to admit a few exceptions. Even so, how many cars do you see abandoned at an incriminating angle, having been driven into a space and left too close to the margins of it, or overhanging the corner of the adjacent one? Why?

Because its driver was hungry, or late, or in a rush, out of 'vape', desperate for the loo etc.

Actually, I doubt that. I think they just didn't care. And when they get back and, after someone has parked perfectly properly next door, find it difficult to get their driver's door open, do you think they care then? Realise? Repent? Nope.

They just blame the other person. But would the penny drop, do we think, if I could give them a more selfish reason?

If I explained to them that they would be less likely to set off their car's most irritating intrusive driver encumbrance system (or ADAS, more commonly) by simply parking properly to begin with?

This is what has become known as parking collision avoidance assist (or PCA for short; I've no idea why they dropped the second A).

It's what autonomously jams the brakes on, completely without warning, when you're reversing into any given space and something in the immediate field of view a car several metres away, a shopping trolley in a neighbouring bay, a pedestrian, a pigeon, an airborne carrier bag has the temerity simply to move a bit.

It may be because it activates only when you're reversing, and so you're already at that heightened state of alertness roughly commensurate with a nervous cat, but this has become the active driver assistance system that I loathe the most.

It's so sudden and overbearingly intrusive that it has risen to the top of the ADAS rogues' gallery and become public enemy number one. I despise it. It could almost move me to violence.

So here's the good news, Mr Selfish T Parker: if you reverse into bays and then drive forwards out of them, not only will you be better able to detect potential hazards more easily with those most reliable of sensors that we call eyes, but you will also be doing less reversing into more potentially hazardous open spaces, making your car's PCA system less likely to be the last straw in an unfortunate chain of events that ultimately causes you to be banned from your local Tesco.

You're welcome. And the rest of us are sincerely grateful.