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. :)

Car length + 6 inches?

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....

Re:Car length + 6 inches?

Don't forget the extra senses available to urban parkers.

Namely, instead of just limiting yourself to visual cues to determine the distance between your car and the bounding cars, you can use your internal accelerometer to sense a slight bump when you get sufficiently close to the other car.

If you're in hurry, you can use acoustic senses, too. There will a nice "bonk" sound as your car meets the next one.

Finally, in some cases it is possible to nudge adjoining cars over just enough to create space for your car. When you do this, though, make sure that no pedestrians are between you and the car to be nudged.

"Motorists will need a degree in maths..."

From the Article: Motorists will need a degree in maths to understand Dr Hoyle's formula, which reads: 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)).

Well, journalists need a few opening parentheses, so we can understand the formula.

Find a space.

FIND a space that's at least one and a half times as long as your car.

Obviously she's not from a large U.S. city. I need a formula for *this* part alone!

Good god learn how to spell

Maybe those mathmatic types dont know that is's spelled CURB not KERB, lol

Paralell

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.

On higher speed limits

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.

Paralell?

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.

Win for women? Yeah, right

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??

Parking in a tight spot

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.

Reverse Parking?

Um, isn't "reverse parking" called "driving"?

Or is this about backing into a parking space?

don't even need the length of your car

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.

Re:don't even need the length of your car

In Chicago, we call it parking by Braille...

I just wish there was something I could impart...

the most annoying mistake I see when watching people parallel park is when they come in too sharp and hit the curb with their back right wheel (assuming parking on R side) and to correct they turn the steering hard right, pull forward, and then hard left to backup again. Because you steer with your FRONT wheels, and your rear wheels can turn at different rates, a hard turn like that doesn't even move your back right wheel away from the curb, so you'll make ZERO progress. Instead, people need to learn to keep the wheel straight ahead while correcting from a curb check.

and if you really can't see behind you, some IR sensing [google.com] never hurt. Worth $25 if you have a long vehicle in the city.

Well known fact

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.

It's easy, with the right car

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).

smaller cars

The simplest solution is to buy an incredibly small car [smart.com].

I designed an algorithm for this

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 [dyndns.org]

Hi, does anyone know the forumla for this parking?

This is the real reverse parking. [evtime.com]

How stunt drivers do it.

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 ;).

German references

Googled for more information and found the following two articles in German
Mathematikerin entwickelt Formel zum Einparken [lycos.de]

Frauen entdecken das Einparken [maennerseiten.de]

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.

Tight...

Caption: "TIGHT FIT: A female mathematician..."
A tight fit eh...

Mod me down...

Re:Wierd Formula

Obviously they didn't copy&paste correctly.
They also explained what are all those variables in the right side of the equation, but forgot to explain what p means.