Is parallel parking a lost art form?

[AlCzervik]

i was just dropping my daughter and her 2 friends off at her school dance and i saw 2 different parents attempting to parallel park their cars and they both failed. Is that still taught in driver's ed?

[MorningGlow]

1. It requires regular practice

I totally sucked at parallel parking--had to take extra lessons specifically to practice the skill before taking my driving test. By some miracle, I did a perfect parallel parking job for the test and never again--till I moved to Boston. MAN, by necessity I became the parallel parking queen--zipping my Pontiac Phoenix into teensy spots on the street like magic--no do-overs. Then I moved back home where it's hardly ever required, and the talent left me. Woe. :cry:

Question: Were the parents trying to park land yachts (SUVs, minivans)? Because I say if you can't wrangle it, don't friggin' buy it.

[AlCzervik]

3. both were sedans, one lexus and one german something or other.

it was pretty funny watching them, they both gave up and double parked.

[MorningGlow]

4. Ah, then perhaps they were afraid of scratching the paint

But I agree--there's nothing funnier than watching people try...and try...and try again to parallel. It is a lost art unless you live in the heart of a big city, I'm convinced.

[AlCzervik]

6. i was dying to yell "You're doing it wrong!" "Cut the wheel and then put it in gear!"

but my daughter asked me to behave myself so i did.

[MorningGlow]

8. Darn those kids

They never let us have any fun!
:rofl:

[AlCzervik]

9. i'm just at the age where sometimes my very existent makes her clinch. I love it!

[Hand]

29. Reminds me of something a friend told me...

She's got a daughter at ahem, that age. "A while ago, I was picking up her and a bunch of her friends. As they were getting in the car, I said, 'Hi--how ya doin'?' When we got home, she said, "God, Mom! How could you say that to my friends?!?!?!"

[xmas74]

16. Nah.

You quickly learn how to parallel park in a college town, if you want a parking spot. I've noticed that every year the new batch of freshmen are even worse than the year before at parking. Often that one parking spot will be the only one for a few blocks so you learn how to parallel fast or you learn how to hoof it to where you are going. (Not fun on a day like this.)

[DarkTirade]

2. It was never taught in my driver's ed

and it wasn't on the driving test either.

[Kutjara]

5. When I moved back to the States last year...

...I had to retake my driving test. There was no parallel parking. In fact, the only maneuver more complex than puttering around suburban streets at 25mph was backing up for a distance of about 20 feet.

I was stunned that, here in the home of the freeway, no freeway driving was included in the test either.

Basically, I could have sent my cat to take the test in my place, with a fair degree of confidence it'd pass.

I'm glad I had to take it though, because it gave me a clear understanding of the driving skills of the people around me on the roads. That level would be none whatsoever.

[AlCzervik]

7. when i took my driving test long ago i had to parallel park and make a 3 point turn

and i took the test on my Nana's gigantic ford station wagon and the registry cop was super grumpy, i passed though because my dad used to make me practice parallel parking and then balancing the clutch and gas pedals on hills, he was a total dick but i learned all of the basics.

[Gormy Cuss]

10. And oddly enough, that was in a state known for really scary drivers

(at least the ones in Greater Boston.) :7

I think CA drivers are much less defensive than Boston drivers, the latter being acutely aware that if they hesitate they'll be cut off at the light, or at a parking space, etc.

[AlCzervik]

12. i took my test at the watertown registry, i wonder if it's even still there.

when i went to mass this summer i forgot you people have lower speed limits than we do so my sister was amazed when i made it from Logan to Eastham in about an hour and 20 minutes. the drivers are pretty bad but i think i know why, people from corner of the planet come to live here so we have bad drivers from all over the globe all converging onto California highways. I see at least one or two major accidents a day without getting the highway, now i'm just used to it.

[Kutjara]

19. Californians are oblivious.

They seem to always have one hand clamped to a cellphone, one gripping a Venti latte, and the third...er, oops. All this vital activity is accompanied by whatever soundtrack is playing at full volume on the car stereo. The outside world is just a vague irritation happening outside the comfortable environment of their mobile living rooms.

Until I bought a car here, I started to think CA cars didn't come equipped with turn signals. The amount of dithering, hesitation, erratic speeding up and slowing down, lane wandering, and other assorted looniness is breathtaking. Of course, there is the other tribe of people who put their turn signals on when they leave the house in the morning and then leave them on all day.

The thing that really flummoxes Angelinos, however, is rain. Any precipitation at all and the freeways turn into bumper-cars. Whenever I see the first spots of rain hit my office window, I log onto the SigAlert website to find that every major freeway already has two major accidents on it. Within a couple of hours, the whole road network is dotted with little red diamonds.

And then there are the rubberneckers. I've never encountered a larger collection of looky-loos and ghouls than in SoCal. I was in a traffic jam for an hour on "the" I5 last year, and assumed there must be a major crash up ahead. When I got to the incident, however, a cop was helping a guy who'd fallen off his bicycle on the hard shoulder. This fascinating tableaux proved riveting enough to snarl the traffic completely on an otherwise clear freeway. I want to scream at everyone "It's not about you!!!!! Move on!!!! You're driving a car, not watching fucking TV!!!"

I could go on, but I just realized I'm running low on blood pressure medication.

[AlCzervik]

20. not me, i drive a stickshift so i drive and thats it, no yapping or drinking coffee

in my car.

[Kutjara]

23. Same here. I don't even have the radio on.

I want to be able to hear the oblivious idiot who's going to try to kill me, even if I can't see him.

[fizzgig]

11. i don't know if it's taught now

but i can tell you it wasn't taught when i took driver's ed over 10 years ago.

i can parallel park my car (an old volvo wagon) and some other smaller cars to some reasonable degree of success...but you can forget me parallel parking my temporary car, an old buick station wagon

but it's a skill i haven't had to develop yet because there are so few places in my town that require parallel parking

[Whoa_Nelly]

13. It's always been a lost art form for me

Have always been terrible at it.
Failed my first driver's test in '70 because I couldn't parallel park my mom's caddie.

It ruined me forever!

I used to have trouble parallel parking any and all of my VW bugs, fer cryin' out loud!
Even my Toyota Tercel...

I'm damaged goods, I tell ya! :cry:



But, I CAN do this!






:D

[AlCzervik]

14. i love my bug, my favorite car ever, i get in it everyday and smile.

[Whoa_Nelly]

17. Have had 3 of them

A '68, '71 and '73 (all used vehicles when I got them)

In '72, though, I did buy a brand spankin' new butterscotch pudding colored VW camper. Lived in it for three years...one of the best times in my life ;)

[AlCzervik]

18. My Friend's husband has a 68 right now he's restoring, i cannot wait until he finishes it.

i'm hoping he'll sell it to me.

[hedgehog]

15. Parallel parking is easy; it's stopping dead in traffic and then backing into

the space that's hard. I've never worked up the nerve to do that in 20 years! I can parallel park as long as there is no other traffic in sight.


I've done the occasional 3 point turn, but I've always had the suspicion that although you have to know how to do one, they're illegal anytime everywhere.

[sniffa]

21. hopefully they didn't have a penis

parallel parking comes with the goods.

[AlCzervik]

22. one did, mr. german sedan, the other one looked female so i'm guessing no penis

but i didn't "Pat" her down (see what i did there) so you never know.

[Silver Swan]

24. Parallel parking is the reason I no longer drive

I got my driver's license in Michigan back in 1962. I did not have to demonstrate parallel parking to pass the driver's test.

When I moved to Chicago after college in 1968, I did not own a car. Moreover, I was told one had to parallel park to get a driver's license in Illinois.

As far as I was concerned, if I was supposed to go to a place where parallel parking was the only option, I would just stay home. So my driver's license expired in 1971, and I never got another one. I used public transportation, which served me well for the next thirty five years, until I moved to the far boonies where public transportation was sparse.

Although, in the mean time I was advised that parallel parking was not a a part of the Illinois driver's test, by then I had become so terrified by the masses of horribly ignorant drivers and frightening traffic conditions that I knew I could never drive again.

So here I am, an old woman immobilized by inability to drive. And I blame it all on parallel parking.

I still think that if I did drive, I would still avoid any destination that required parallel parking.....

[Flaxbee]

25. I really don't understand why it is so difficult for some drivers...

It was part of my driver's test in California in the late '80s. :shrug: I was in St. Petersburg, Russia recently and NO ONE could parallel park worth a damn. It's a global epidemic! Would that be a pandemic?

[liberaltrucker]

26. I can PP a 72' big rig in a space that would astonish you

But PP a car? Can't do it, wouldn't be prudent.

:shrug:

[ElizabethDC]

27. It's not on the driving test in FL

I've never learned how to parallel park - I was never taught how to in driver's ed and haven't bothered to learn since. It might be a nice skill to acquire, though. :shrug:

[Rabrrrrrr]

28. Anything that requires skill, practice, thoughtfulness, and courtesy is a lost art form.

[liberaltrucker]

30. As always, Rab, you cut through the bullshit

:toast:

[BrotherBuzz]

31. Once a person masters parallel parking with a stick on a San Francisco hill....

they never forget how. Never.

[MonkeyFunk]

32. I used to think so

until I saw a horse-drawn carriage being parallel parked today.

That horse was better than most drivers I've seen. He managed it beautifully. A big clydesdale.

[last_texas_dem]

33. I'm horrible at it

I never really learned to do it, and there was no actual driving component in order to get my driver's license here in Texas, so I never had to prove that I could do it. If you don't live in a big city, you are generally able to avoid having to do it, at least in my experience. I've gotten in a couple of crunches (parking in Milwaukee comes to mind) where I had to attempt to do it and managed to almost do a passing job at it after three or four tries!

[LynzM]

34. I think it depends if you ever have to park in a city.

I've ridden with friends in Boston and Chicago who could parallel park like mad. But it's not a skill I'm especially good at, since I rarely need to use it, and certainly not multiple times per day.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

35. I took driver's ed six months ago. For the test you need to know similar parking but not parallel.

In Maine, you have to do a 50-foot back-up and park behind one car rather than behind one car and in front of another car. I have yet to take the test, mostly because I haven't seriously practiced this truncated form of parallel parking yet.

[NewWaveChick1981]

36. It took me a while to learn to parallel park.

I got my driver's license when I was 16. But by the time I was 22, I had it down to a science. Still do. :)

[billyskank]

37. I did the most AWESOME piece of parallel parking the other day

Small space, but I got my car in in one movement, two inches from the kerb. Perfection. B-)

[yellowdogintexas]

38. not in my sedan! I can parallel park left or right sided, driving a stick shift

current car is an automatic but I can park it well.

This is because we lived for 4 years in a house with only street parking and it was parallel or nothing. I was driving a 5 speed car at the time.

edited to add: I wasn't very good at it before we lived in this house, but within a couple of months, I had it down, and could parallel park on a hill if necessary.

[SPKrazy]

39. I dunno

haven't had driver's ed since I was 16

a long time ago :rofl:

they taught it then

I can still do it

however I would rather drive right into a spot

people tend to box me in

:hi:

[DS1]

40. no, morons are just driving trucks bigger than they can handle

I see this ALL the time in my little town, and point and laugh at their miserable driving skills.

[oustemnow]

41. Oddly, I seem to be getting worse at it

For some reason, I'm increasingly unable to judge how much room I have in front of and (especially) behind me. So I'm always cutting it tighter than necessary, bumping the curb with my car bumping the curb and making an even bigger ass out of myself than usual.

[catmandu57]

42. I had a 77 Granada that was a dream to parallel park

The thing practically parked itself, I loved that car.