Reversing into a bay: reverse bay parking to your left tips UK

Other Driving videos for you:

Large Roundabouts  |  Turning in the Road (three point turn)  |  Reverse on the corner to your left  |  Emergency Stop 

Parallel Parking – Reverse Parking  |  Reverse into the bay to your left  |  Reverse into the bay to your left – mistake

Reverse bay parking tips

Reverse parking into a bay is a fairly straightforward driving manoeuvre. In this video we give reverse bay parking tips for UK drivers wishing to master their bay parking so that it becomes second nature during the test and beyond.

Reverse into the bay to your left video tips transcript:

Today we are going to do the reverse into the bay to your left, a bay parking as it’s sometimes known. The key to this is make sure obviously there’s nobody around, look around for other cars, pedestrians especially and children – be very, very careful. You don’t need to be that close to the other cars when you’re doing this, you don’t have to be lining yourself up too close to the double parked cars on reverse bays. The further away from the parked cars you are the more of an angle you get to swing into the bay.

So what I’m going to do is show you what I mean now, so I’m going to start the engine, put the car into reverse, when I put the car into reverse the white light comes on outside so people know I’m reversing. I’m going to have a good look around, make sure nobody’s coming, no pedestrians, no cars. It looks like there’s nobody around so I’m just going to reverse back to get into position, so I’m going to keep away from the parked cars so you can see don’t need to be too close to them.

I’m going to line myself up, as I’m going back I’m going to be just about two cars away from the bay I want to go into – that’s when I’m going to get everything set up. So I’m going to have a good look around, make sure there’s nobody coming because what’s going to happen now is when I turn the wheel to the right the front of the car is going to swing out, got to make sure nobody’s coming. So as I’m going back I’m going to give the wheel a big swing, take your time when you’re doing this, don’t panic, look around lots and lots and lots. Look over your right shoulder, you can see how close you are then to the parked car on your right. Stopping, looking around making sure you’re going beautifully into the bay.

You want to try and keep equal distance between the two cars you’re going between, simply because you want to be able to open the door when you’re getting out. So a little bit over, just going to correct that a little bit and then straighten it up, looking round and looking behind, again nobody coming. Now we’re beautifully in between the two parked cars.

Now when you do this manoeuvre if it goes wrong, what I mean by that is you’re over the white line in the other bay a little bit, all you need to do is go forward and correct. Let’s pretend I’m over the line – just going to move forward and correct.