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Reverse Parking Made Easy
dsmalle writes "Dr. Rebecca Hoyle from Surrey University in England has derived a formula for reverse parking your car. A lot of insurance companies would welcome an initiative to automate parking using this formula I guess. I'm sure somebody must have tried to do this before, so why don't we see this in cars?" New York drivers know that a space that's the length of your car plus six inches is plenty of room. :)
Good googleemooglee we are going to have every man this side of the Hudson trying to squeeze a H2 into a space the size of a honda....
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Well, journalists need a few opening parentheses, so we can understand the formula.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Maybe those mathmatic types dont know that is's spelled CURB not KERB, lol
No I didnt spell check this post...
I thought this article was going to talke about backing into a "normal" parking spot. But apparently people don't seem to know what a paralell park is. It's not a reverse park.
Personally, I think if you can't park anywhere, at anytime, then you shouldn't be driving. United States hand out driver's licenses too easily. The driving test should be a rigorous test of skill. Only extremely skilled drivers should be allowed to get behind the wheel. A system like that would have numerous obvious positive effects. One of them would be that driving would be a lot more fun. Mainly because you have confidence in your own ability as well as the ability of others. You wouldn't have to be constantly watching out for what every other car is doing, but instead be able to have fun worrying about your own driving.
On another slightly more unrelated note, speed limits are bs. Speed limits make the roads less safe in order to provide revenue for the states. Most people drive comfortable at about 85 mph (on the highway). If the speed limit was 85, not many people would feel comfortable driving faster than that. Presently with speed limits like 65 and 75 people feel that they are still in control of their car when they go over the limit. What results is some people who refuse to go over the limit and some people who always go 5 or 10 or even 15 mph over the limit. I think its obvious that it would be safer if every car on the road was driving at about 85mph as opposed to some driving 65 and some driving as high as 90. Mixing fast + slow cars disrupts the traffic and makes thing less-safe.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
If women can't even park their cars right, how the hell are they going to compute (p=r-w/2,g)-w+2r+b,f )-w+2r-fg max((r+w/2)+f,(r+w/2)+b)-((2r),(r+w/2+k)) on the fly??
My roommate always tells me never to turn the steering wheel when the car is not moving. It's very bad for the tyres and the steering mechanism he says. Then I ask him if he ever parked a car in Utrecht or Amsterdam (two busy cities in Holland). No, he has never done that. I don't know about you but I can't park a car in a tight spot without steering while the car is not moving.
-- Cheers!
Um, isn't "reverse parking" called "driving"?
Or is this about backing into a parking space?
You apparently don't know how to spell Parallel. Personally, I think you shouldn't be writing English.
Hell, in Cambridge/Boston (and I presume any crowded city), you will see cars all the time that show the signs of not needing a space that is longer than the length of your car.
It can even be a few inches shorter.
There were multiple times I've come out to see someone squeezed up against my car and another car on the other side of them.
So presumably, as long as your car has modern plastic/springy bumpers, and you don't care about it (specifically the transmission I would guess), then just cram it in to the spot and enjoy your parking spot.
Granted this will bend your license plate, crack your bumpers, perhaps ding your fenders, and likely lose you some paint... but hey, it is worth it to park.
Usually you see this technique on Honda Civics and other cars of that size and price range.
The big BMW/Mercedes/etc seem to like their cars too much.
Although you also tend to see a lot of Jeeps doing it - they are higher up, so it usually does less damage to them and more damage to others.
Ahh, the joys of parallel parking.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
and if you really can't see behind you, some IR sensing never hurt. Worth $25 if you have a long vehicle in the city.
I don't know how this will help, because it is a well known fact that womwn are less-abled not only in parking, but in the mathematical arts.
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
Not only the opening parentheses, but it looks like some function names were left out too.
...".
What does "r-w/2,g)-w+2r+b,f)" mean? If they're not argument lists, then why the commas?
Also what does "-fg max(...)" mean? Is there supposed to be something between 'fg' and 'max'?
Again: "-((2r),(r+w/2+k))"?
Lots of holes in the "formula". Then again, I don't have "... a degree in maths
Just to be clear: I'm criticizing the reporter, not the researcher. If the reporter doesn't know the facts of the report - they shouldn't include stuff they aren't sure of. To be fair, at least the variables are listed within the article.
But, given this mess, I claim to have solved the meaning of life with a simple formula. Of course, it's unreadable and unverifiable.
This is not my sig.
I'll second that. Not only you make good points, but I'll go further by saying that most speed limits were set some 30 years ago, when cars weren't nearly as safe as what they are now: think about airbags, crash-tests, engineering on the car body (basically made softer) to avoid killing the driver, etc.
My folks' volvo has a turning radius of slightly larger than 30 feet- and it's a full size wagon. Volvos are famous for wide steering angle. It also has exceptional visibility, due to enormous windows all around.
I can parallel-park it in about 6 seconds flat, in ONE move(no forward/backwards business), to within two inches of the curb, provided I've got 12 inches of room.
Some people just don't "get" "how" cars "go" backwards, despite how simple it really is. Of course, I had spent most of my childhood summers driving a outboard motorboat, so I had driving backwards etc down pat(boats are far trickier, since you often have to VERY quickly apply force to stop moving in a particular direction; try parallel parking a boat); trailers are still a little tricky because they have a lot of "conditions" to their movement when going backwards. In all cases, you've got to think about how the car is going to move, and more importantly, where the non-steering end of the car is going to end up based on your actions, because that's most of the game(-especially- with trailers).
Please help metamoderate.
The simplest solution is to buy an incredibly small car.
"Follow your Bliss." -- Joseph Campbell
Personally, I think if you can't spell anywhere, at anytime, then you shouldn't be typing. United States hand out keyboards too easily. The spelling test should be a rigorous test of skill. Only extremely skilled spellers should be allowed to get behind the keyboard A system like that would have numerous obvious positive effects. One of them would be that reading would be a lot more fun. Mainly because you have confidence in your own ability as well as the ability of others. You wouldn't have to be constantly watching out for what every other word is, but instead be able to have fun worrying about your own spelling.
I can't take credit for coming up with a formula like that, but in one of my courses in college we designed an algorithm to park a robotic car.
Actually, all our source and some videos are on my website... http://djonce.dyndns.org/pburgh_projects.htm
An insurance company survey last year revealed women were almost twice as likely as men to have a collision in a car park, 23 per cent more likely to hit a stationary car and 15 per cent more likely to reverse into another vehicle.
Mrs Symes argues that this is because women are more likely to stay at a crash scene.
From Article FIND a space that's at least one and a half times as long as your car.
Yeah, Right! I'm happy with six inches on each side in New York, the real problem is getting out of the spot when you have 2 inches in front and the car behind you is sitting on your bumper. The the "trick" is that in first gear you can push each car an extra couple inches, then you have enough space to get out little by little. If one of the cars is an SUV or has a car alarm you can push it 6 or 8 inches, you shouldn't drive either if your too cheap to park in a garage.
Personally, I think if you can't park anywhere, at anytime, then you shouldn't be driving.
What about a special "Midwestern" drivers license. If you live in North Dakota you hardly ever see another car anyway, parking is not an issue. Still it is way to easy to get a license in the US. In most 1st world countries you pay through the nose for driving classes and then take a long drive through city traffic with the DMV official. I got my license by studying while in line for the permit and then a week later, after spending an hour in a car -- so I'd know which petal was the break and which was the clutch, I took a 5 minute drive in the suburbs. I rented a car the next day, in California, with a piece of paper that said I wasn't so good with the clutch but would still be mailed a drivers license. Getting the plastic one with my picture on it turned out to take friggin six weeks, though the official drivers permit arrived even later.
This is the real reverse parking.
I'm happy with six inches on each side in New York, the real problem is getting out of the spot when you have 2 inches in front and the car behind you is sitting on your bumper.
I once literally had both cars touching my car. Somehow I still managed to get out. Probably had something to do with the fact that neither car was there when I parked there, so I had no moral problems with the bump bump method.
Personally, I think if you can't park anywhere, at anytime, then you shouldn't be driving.
Then we wouldn't exactly have any drivers now would we? One of the first things you learn when parking in the real world is just how much pressure you can put on a car before there's damage. They don't teach that in drivers' ed.
No shit dude. Christ, my grandmother could park a car in that and she's dead. The real skill lies in parking in a space that's 6 inches longer than the diagonal of your car, which is effectively how long your car is while you're midway through parking.
Clearly, this guide is for women. Any guy who can't park in a space 1.5 carlengths long needs to have an "F" in the gender on his license.
Get front wheel drive manual car with a very very good handbrake.
;).
Head towards the parking spot at a fair speed, as perpendicular to the spot as you can. Swerve car and pull handbrake and then brake and counter steer so that you neatly skid and slide in sideways.
With this method you can park in a spot that's practically the same length as your car - just depends on how accurate you are.
Getting out requires a bit more space - the length of the space must be slightly more than the diagonal length of your car. Pull handbrake to max, turn steering wheel max (to lock) towards side you want to exit from. Stomp on clutch, red line engine, release clutch, burn rubber and gradually spin car out of space.
Not recommended in uncontrolled environments
Googled for more information and found the following two articles in German
Mathematikerin entwickelt Formel zum Einparken
Frauen entdecken das Einparken
the second has a different version of the formula:
p=r-w/2, g)-w+2r+b, f)-w+2r-fg max((r+w/2)+f, (r+w/2)+b)£min((2r), (r+w/2+k))
Still doesn't make a whole lot of sense with unopened brackets and commas that don't appear to be separating parameters of a function.
Caption: "TIGHT FIT: A female mathematician..."
A tight fit eh...
Mod me down...
an F in gender :) Thanks, today has been a royal BIATCH and that got a big rolling laugh started.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?