Driving Lessons in Peterborough. Driving Lessons in Grantham.
She was practising doing reverse parallel parks on one of her driving lessons in Grantham. The problem was that she kept getting too close to the kerb when she was behind the parked car. (Check here if you want a reminder of the driving test requirements for this manoeuvre).
The ACTUAL problem though was the angle in which the car was coming into the kerb .... it was unnecessarily steep. In real life, we may well need to come in at a steeper angle if say there is just one car lengths gap to fit into, but for the driving test, the DSA give us a very generous 2 car lengths to play with ("3 cheers for the DSA!"). This may not sound like a big deal, but believe me, it is. As such, we can control the angle in which we reverse into the kerb, to make it more shallow, and that means it is more forgiving.
Try and picture this in your head. If you reverse into the kerb at say an angle of 2 o/c on the clockface, that is much steeper than an angle of say 1 o/c. Coming in at a 1 o/c angle gives your eyes more time to appreciate the distance from the kerb... why?.... because the car does more travelling, slowly but surely, towards the kerb. Go in at a 2 o/c angle, and it all comes in too quickly, it leaves very little room for ... sorry to say it..... manoeuvre!
All that remains is to find some means of repeatedly, accurately, coming in at an angle of 1 o/c. There's loads of ways of doing that. On my intensive driving course I spend time identifying a method that appeals to each particular person (I find a 'one size fits all' approach, does nothing of the sort in reality).
The same concept can be applied to the reverse bay park. If you set up the manoeuvre starting too close to the bay you intend to reverse into, then you end up 'cutting across' the white line of the bay. You simply do not need to make it hard for yourself. Think of it like a large boat that you are trying to moor into the bay. You don't want to start off near to the tip ends of the bays, you need some space to 'swing' it round in a larger turning circle.
As with all the manoeuvres, my preferred method is have the freedom to controllably experiment. If you control the pace at which you reverse, and control the amount of steering, then all that remains is discovering the precise point to start steering.
Anyway, hope you now know what I mean by "It's all to do with the angle of the dangle". I might talk gibberish, but there is something meaningful in what I'm saying!
Hope this blog has helped you by considering how the angle at which you reverse affects the outcome of your manoeuvres. Please feel free to grade/comment below. Wishing you well.
www.BIGTOM.org.uk
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