There is invariably someone right behind you that does not know you want to back in to a space. It would be so much easier except for the fact that it just doesn’t work very well. Why is that?!
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‘Cause the turny wheels are in the front and it takes less distance to pivot the back wheels with the turny wheels than it does to straighten out going forward.
Front wheels steer. Back wheels do not. You have to put in the non-steering wheels first, then the steering ones can push themselves in. If you were driving a forklift (steering wheels in back), you would pull in. Hope that helps.
When you’re moving forward, your front wheels are dragging the back wheels along. If you steer your front wheels into the parking lane and straighten out, as you move forward, the back wheels will gradually drift into the lane behind your steer wheels, but they’ll never quite catch up. Unless you oversteer in the first place— but that’s called driving onto the sidewalk, and usually discouraged.
This effect is much more pronounced with a tractor-trailer, and why learning to back one of those up accurately is something new truck drivers often struggle with.
To parallel park, you:
1. Go into the space diagonally.
2. Swing the end that’s still sticking out into the road round into the spot.
For #1, it works just fine forwards.
However with step #2 you need to move part of the car sideways. Only the steered wheels can move the car sideways. Since the front wheels do the steering, if you enter the space forwards, the part of the car sticking into the road has un-steerable wheels and therefore can’t move sideways at all.
Incidentally, it’s the same with the fact you can’t reverse out of a parallel parked spot.
TLDR because the steering is only at one end of the car.
It’s because your back wheels don’t turn.
If you have one of the few cars with rear wheel steering you could park that way.
A lot of things like fork lifts actually do this.
In addition to other people’s explanations on reverse parking, put your blinker on before you pass the empty spot to indicate to the person behind you that you intend to reverse park.
The front of your car can move sideways, because the front wheels can turn. The back can *only* move forward and backward.
So you need to somehow position the back of the car by moving only forward and backward, but the front can be positioned by moving side to side.
This *is* how you parallel park. You back up until the rear wheels are in the right spot. Then, you turn and shift the front wheels sideways until you’re lined up.
Thanks folks! I never seem to get any better at parallel parking despite 40 years of trying!
Since the front wheels steer, the car rotates around the back wheels at low speed. If you picture turning the steering wheel all the way and accelerating slightly, the front wheels will follow a large circle and the rear wheels will follow a small circle. To parallel park, the rear wheels need to go in first so the front’s larger circle rotates the car into the space while the rear wheels remain in roughly the same position.
I found the gif on the wikipedia page for parallel parking to be helpful – if you tried to front-in into a single spot, you would have to drive the front tires over the curb. As others said, rear wheel steering gives better maneuverability in tight places – this is why forklifts in wear houses are rear wheel steered. However, when you drive the car in reverse, it is not “dynamically stable” so to speak – if you let go of the wheel, if the car is not perfectly straight, it will start turning itself, while with normal front wheel steering, the car tends to straighten itself out.
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