You’re Parking Wrong

Why it’s almost always better to back into a space than pull into it head-on.

By Tom Vanderbilt

www.slate.com

There are myriad moments in everyday life when some common behavior can be performed in one of two ways, thus cleaving the world into two bitterly feuding camps, capable of using strongly held convictions, pseudo-scientific explanations, and rough psychological profiling to denigrate or dismiss the other side. The most notorious instance: The great “under” or “over” toilet paper roll debate.

On my blog, I was recently reminded of one of these almost-invisible, yet strangely polarizing, social behaviors, this time from the world of traffic. A reader named Jeff wanted to know:

What makes some people back into parking spaces rather than pull straight in? Is this a regional thing (in the south)? I’ve always thought that it takes much longer to back into the space and pull straight out than it takes to pull straight in and back out of the space.

See full article here.