Parking tips four New Driver?

The way things line up is different on every car. My suggestion is to go some place where there is a line painted on the pavement. You may be able to do it at home, or you may have to go to an empty parking lot.

Try to place your car so the front of the car is almost up to the line. Get out and look. Get back in and move the car if necessary. Once you have it exactly right, get back in and look to see what the line lines up with. It won't help you if I tell you where that is for me, because your height will change the alignment.

Then do the same thing with a line in the back of the car.

Then for the passenger side (as if parallel parking).

Once you know where the ends and sides of your car are, you can begin practicing, again, in an empty parking lot or an empty bit of a side street.

The front of the car is very misleading. Some folks have installed an antenna on the front bumper so it sticks up to where they can see it. Do that if you feel you need to. I prefered to just learn where the front of the car is, but I'd been driving for nearly 30 years before getting my Prius.

Practicing with lines on the pavement, away from other cars, is the best advice I can give you, and pay no attention to anyone who tells you to line this up with that, because it will be different for different people of different heights. I did find that my Prius was harder to parallel park than my old Civic was, because the ends of the car were not where I expected them to be. (On the other hand, my Xebra is really easy to parallel park, and it's powered by water instead of gas. )

 

To be legal, you stop with the front of the car even with the stop sign, then ease out to look if you need to.

As for parking, I find the Prius the easiest car to parallel park that I have ever driven. Pull up even with the car in front of the space, leaving a little room between your passenger door and the one you are pulling up to. Shift into reverse and look back over your shoulder to line up turning into the space. Once you are heading in correctly, shift your view to the backup camera and you can see exactly how much room you have behind you. It shows everything including your rear bumper.

Tom

 

I agree, the Prius (thanks to that wonderful camera) is the easiest car to parallel park I have ever had, and I used to have a Geo Metro.

 

With regard to parallel parking, get some expendable objects that
won't damage the car, set 'em up like a space near a curb, and
PRACTICE. Heck, I still suck at parallel parking; one reason is
probably that I don't like scrubbing the tires in place by turning
without rolling...
.
_H*

 

Practice makes perfect. I've never used "tricks" like that, I just get a feel for the car by practicing driving and parking. Then again I've been driving for 20 years.

I switched from a VW to a Prius a week ago and it was perfectly natural - the Prius is slightly wider but I can still slide it perfectly into a parking spot.

The best advice I could give is practice. Don't be afraid to spend an hour or two in an empty parking lot, park, get out and see how you did, then drive a bit and park again.

As for driving, the hardest thing to learn when you're (relatively) new to driving is to focus your eyes far down the road rather than right in front of you, and hold the wheel loosely rather than tightly. Both of those encourage a smoother driving style.

One more important thing: I would highly recommend ignoring (gasp!) or turning off (the horror!) the MFD display for your first few hundred miles with the car. You won't win the MPG game, but you'll get a good feel for driving the car before you let all of the pretty displays distract you.

Other than that, I haven't found any particular tricks to driving/parking this car that don't apply to every other car.

Good luck, and Congratulations! I envy you - I would have loved to have something as nice as a Prius for my first car instead of the many hand-me-down vehicles on the verge of death I drove...

 

Yep, nothing beats practice. To that end, I recommend getting a few largeish, empty cardboard boxes and set them up in a practice area (quiet dead-end street, parking lot, what have you) and just run into them. Same idea as using lines or pylons, but they make a satisfying "bonk" (if you can hear it with your window open) so you don't have to get out to check

 

Whitespider, you may want to disable the back up beeper. In normal operation I don't mind it but it becomes maddening when maneuvering backwards.

 

You might want to check into financing a small amount of the car just for credit score purposes, paying back a car on a payment schedule will do wonders for future purposes even if you lose some money on interest now.

As for parking, pick spots with at least a couple of feet leftover in front and back.. the first day you get a parallel park ding from another driver will be the saddest day of your life. You can get a can of the factory paint from the dealer, a quart is like $10.

A good place to pp practice is hotel parking lots where you can do it with other live cars.

Congrats on your first car purchase, enjoy!

 

I like large box-store parking lots, with the big square cart corrals.
I taught one of the teenagers how to park what is now his Malibu using the empty cart corral to stand in for the car in front that he was parallel parking behind! Lovely dinging noise when touched, light enough to move when bumped, it left no mark on the car. And, it's about the size of a largish car.

 

If you have trouble seeing where the front of the Prius is, you can get a cheap ($12) cell phone antenna and attach it to your front license plate bracket. You should be able to just see the tip. You can add an antenna ball, if you want to see it better.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ Jun 2 2007, 08:31 PM) [snapback]454198[/snapback]</div>

I actually found the Prius the most difficult car to parallel park that I had ever owned, due to the confusion over where the front of the car actually was. I mastered it by practice, and the method I outlined above.

Yvette the E 'Vette, on the other hand, parks like a dream. I never had to "figure out" where the front and back of the car are.

 

I have no problem with the front of the car, but I'm still getting used to where the back of the car is, since I'm used to driving sedans where the rear bumper is farther back than the rear window. But I am finding the backup camera to be very helpful.

Note that the backup camera uses a wide-angle lens, so it has a bit of a fish-eye effect. I've noticed that when I'm a few feet away from something, if I look out the rear window I feel like I'm about to hit it but then I look at the backup camera's view and it seems I've got tons of room. I've learned to trust the backup camera. Just go slowly when you're in reverse and you'll be fine.

p.s. I second (third? fourth?) the advice about practicing in a parking lot. I learned more from a few hours of driving around an empty parking lot with my father than I did in an entire driver's ed class.

 

Best advice is practice & take it slow the first few times. I do have to say that the Prius is easier to parallel park than any car I've ever owned. I successfully parked it the first time I tried. Previous car was a Chevy Cavalier than I couldn't reliably park to save my soul. Back-up camera helps a lot, but you have to learn to trust it - & go slow. I usually find when I am parked that I had more room at the rear than I thought.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(whitespider @ Jun 3 2007, 06:13 PM) [snapback]454592[/snapback]</div>

I'm in the real estate business and I help people buy their first homes all the time that have no credit that think this, it is not true and more often than not these people who have good income have to wind up in a higher rate program that uses supplimental crediting (like rent and utility payment history etc) or have to have some sort of co-borrower or put someone else on the title for their house.

Listen to this advice, don't buy the car completely in cash. Finance a part of it for a few years. Thats an INSTALLMENT account which will be much more beneficial to your credit than a REVOLVING account like a credit card, department store card, etc.

In fact if I were you I'd finance the whole car provided I had the income to make the payments and invest that cash in something that earns more than the interest costs you. Credit is not evil, its just a tool you need to control and that you can't let control you.

 

I've been driving for a long time and the most difficult thing for me is to judge how low the car is. Be careful going in and out of driveways, parking in grass parking lots or driving anywhere that isn't perfectly level. Also, don't pull in too close in a parking space or you may scrape the curb.

The advice to turn off the display is the best of all. I have almost had a couple of wrecks because I can't quit watching the monitor. Fortunately, it has great brakes!

 

You get used to the display. I've been driving with the nav display for years now and its no longer distracting.