(This was written before Sam passed his test)
This is a picture of Sam taken after his first independent bay park.
He spends most of his time on lessons grinning. When he’s not grinning his face goes all serious and he concentrates hard on getting things right. Then when he’s finished and it’s all gone OK he grins again just the way he is doing in the picture above.
It’s not that hard is it?
So this is how you do it then………………….
You can set the car up at 90 degrees to the bay as in the picture above or you can turn so that the back of your car points at the bay and then reverse back in a straight line. Either way is fine as long as you can end up in the parking bay itself from your starting position. The important thing is that you look all around before you start to reverse and make sure that it’s safe to start your manoeuvre.
As you reverse, turn towards the bay and as well as keeping up good all round observations keep looking in your side mirrors until you get the view you can see in the pictures shown here……..
And here…………..
If you take a look at the two pictures below you will see what it looks like when it’s not going right. In the first picture below there is no white line close to the car.
In the second picture there is a white line close to the car but not quite close enough. The trick is to keep looking in the mirrors while you steer so that you can see when the door handle gets closer to the white line. When the door handle is just about to touch the white line, straighten the wheels quickly and then reverse back in a straight line keeping the lines equal distances from the sides of the car as in the earlier pictures above.
All the time you are doing this you need to look around to see if anything else in the car park is going to conflict with what you are doing and especially if there is anything behind you. With this in mind make sure that you actually look through the rear window so that you KNOW it’s clear directly behind you as in the picture below. If anything is conflicting with you, STOP and wait until it’s reasonably safe to carry on.
Now you need to know how far back to go. The best way to do this is to look back over your right shoulder at the kerb or fence behind you and stop when you think your car is far enough back.
This is the view from outside the car……
And if Holley can do it too…………………..
