After critical analysis, Hayley Nicholls asks: Is it time to back out of this argument?
My husband reverses into car parks. He is that guy.
The time-honoured adage of ‘opposites attract’ typically rings true in my marriage, and indeed, this case is no different.
Personally, I avoid reversing. I’m the driver hovering nearby, eyes narrowing with growing impatience, watching the guy reversing into a carpark and thinking, ‘But why though?’
Drive in and reverse out; or reverse in and drive out? Potato, potah-to.
I’ve never really understood the difference.
I assumed it was a personal preference, based on whether you’d rather do something annoying now or later. One of life’s telling little scenarios that separates those living for the moment from the forward planners. A tortoise-and-the-hare situation, or a real-life Myers-Briggs test.
You might be an INFP, but choices like this reveal whether you’re more YOLO! or SWOT (analysis).
However, this choice is not always ours.
I have a work colleague who hails from Young, one of many regional towns whose main street is bordered on either side by diagonal parking bays, signposted ‘Reverse Parking Only’.
Loyal to the ways of his people, my Young friend insists reverse parking “just makes sense!”
“It improves traffic flow! People have a clear view when they’re pulling out, so they can leave quickly – instead of looking behind them to try to hustle their way in.”
Fair play. That’s a point to Team Reverse Parking.
But hang on. Don’t you hold up traffic initially, as you literally stop your vehicle in the middle of the road before slowly inching backwards into place?
If minimising congestion is the goal, surely we miss no matter the angle we choose to shoot from.
Also, when reversing out of a carpark, you can usually wait for a natural gap in traffic to limit the impact on others.
Back on Main Street in Young, signage removes this choice and insists on reverse parking.
If signposts are getting involved, there must be logic here. As we know, the government would never invest in something that doesn’t make sense.
Reversing between stationary objects is clearly a safer option than backing up into a heavily trafficked thoroughfare.
Busy thoroughfare or quiet back street – one environment is static, the other is unpredictable and higher risk overall.
Okay, okay. Point Two, Team Reverse Parking.
In more qualitative commentary online, it’s said that drivers tend to arrive at their destination fresher and more alert, making it a safer time for such driving manoeuvres. Upon leaving, drivers are more likely to be fatigued or harried.
I cast my mind back and search my own experience.
I recall, in the exuberance of youth, being so late on my lunch break that I violently swung the nose of my car straight into an unforgiving concrete bollard.
Visions emerge of myself just last week, taking deep breaths after grocery shopping with the children, reversing into the busy carpark to the soothing sounds of a motor-mouthed 7-year-old asking me to unwrap a Chupa Chups, revealing she is busting for a wee, and also “?Can you put on K-pop Demon Hunters?”
Three-Nil, Team Reverse Parking.
It might be time for me to back out of this argument, before I lose more than the crumpled bumper of my long-suffering Hyundai Excel.
It seems – hasty as my parking style – I may have been too quick to dismiss reverse parking people. Although obviously, I will never tell my husband that.
But next time I find myself hunched over the steering wheel, waiting not-so-patiently, while some risk-averse forward-thinker reverses into their park, at least I’ll know why.
The real personality test is: will I change my own ways?
