Rules of Thumb

There’s a trick for parallel parking. You pull up next to the car you want to park behind, as close to it as you’re comfortable with, and then reverse until your rear view mirror on that side, is past the rear tire, and only then do you start turning in.

Most cars have a glass pane after the rear window that corresponds with this section, so it’s a useful target - once your mirror is in that section, you can turn your steering wheel all the way in the opposite direction, and slowly back in to nail the parallel park in one go. It’s one of those simple things that make it so much easier to get the job done.

When I notice people struggling to parallel park, it seems like they genuinely don’t have any technique in mind, and are relying on trial and error to get it right. It can be quite painful to watch as sometimes you can tell their latest actions are taking them further away from the end goal - I’ve intervened on occasion just to help get it done.

On occasion when I’ve been a passenger and tried to explain the technique, there seemed to be a reluctance to engage enough to learn it and save future effort spent on parking struggles. Maybe this shows a certain level of incuriosity, but more probably, they just don’t see it as a pressing problem to be solved.

In a bout of self-awareness today on my run, what would be slight irritation watching someone struggle with parallel parking quelled when I realized I’d had to do it so many times that I needed a hack or a way to smoothen the experience and get fairly consistent results.

This made me wonder, what are any rules of thumb I might be unaware of, which could make my experience smoother in other fields of practice I’m engaging day-to-day?