The Right Way to Parallel Park, Step-by-Step

Parallel parking isn't hard once you've done it a few times, but it can be nerve-wracking if you're new, or trying to do it right for a driving test. Thankfully, over at Quora, Yishan Wong offers this step-by-step breakdown of how to parallel park perfectly every single time—and he's spot on.

Here's how he explains you do it:

Here are the directions, with extra "do it exactly this way"-style bolding and prompting:

  1. Drive around until you find a spot that looks big enough.
  2. Pull up even to the front car. If your cars are different lengths, line up the back of your car with the back of the front car as best you can. You don't have to be exact here.
  3. Stop.
  4. While stopped, turn your wheel all the way to the right. ALL THE WAY. Don't move forward or back while doing this!
  5. Turn around and look out the back of your car.
  6. Begin backing up. Your car should start turning into the spot. Don't turn your wheel away from the all-the-way-right position!
  7. Stop backing up when the right-front corner of the rear car is in the exact middle of your rear windshield. If you imagine a line extending backwards from your car along its centerline, you stop when the right-front corner of the rear car reaches that line.
  8. I said STOP.
  9. While stopped, turn your wheel back to the middle position.
  10. Back up slowly until your car just barely clears the front car, then stop again.
  11. STOP.
  12. Turn your wheel all the way to the left. All the way! Stay stopped while you do this.
  13. Now keep backing in. Don't turn your wheel away from the all-the-way-left position!
  14. Once your car is parallel, STOP and then turn your wheel to face forwards again.

If you do these steps exactly, your car will magically place itself into the correct position.

He's right, and if you hit the link below, he describes further why this works repeatedly. The key is to remember that parallel parking is a repeatable thing, it doesn't require judgement, it doesn't require experience, it just requires that you have a space large enough for your vehicle and you repeat the same process over and over again with as little variation as possible. In his own words:


You do not need to practice, you just need to fucking follow the directions. Parallel is not a "skill," it is more like a binary thing.

We couldn't agree more. Hit the link below to see the whole response over at Quora, or check out this previously posted graphic or this video guide for those of us who are visual learners.

Driving: What are some parallel parking tips? | Quora via Boing Boing

Photo by IFCAR.