Parallel parking
 

Just had a butt-puckering moment while out doing errands in town. I had just parallel parked in a good space, with plenty of room ahead of me for another car to park, when a lady in a Lexus SUV backed into that spot in front of me. Something told me to wait and not get out of the car yet. Sure enough, she blasted backwards towards me during her parking maneuver, with no signs of stopping. I had already shut the car off, so I frantically turned the ignition back on so I could hit the horn to get her to stop. She stopped mere inches from the front of my car. I asked her if she was aware how close she was to me, and she said, "Oh, it's fine. I have beepers," referring to her parking sensors. So it got me wondering--our cars are so low to the ground, with the lower section of the front bumper particularly low, I wonder if the parking sensors on a high SUV bumper even register the lower part of our front fascias. They might just sense a higher part of the front of our cars, like the leading edge of the hood, which sits quite a bit back from the lower bumper. She might have genuinely thought she had more room when she instead was almost on top of me.

In any case, yet one more thing to worry about when parking amongst the general public. It's one thing to get a ding on the car from something you've committed to, like a trackday. It's entirely different to get a big ding from something idiotic like someone backing into your car in front of the post office... :banghead:

"Oh, it's fine. I have beepers,"

Classic.

Parking beepers, lane change beepers, when will they add a head up your a$$ beeper? 😂😂

Reading your story gave me anxiety!

What concerns me is how much attention they pay to their own sensors and if they know how much space is left when tone goes full solid.

Why do you think you needed to have the ignition on to beep the horn??

Funny story, back in high school my buddy Paul was a lousy parallel parker. So he would just pull the nose of the car in, and then go to the back of the bumper, lift up the car, and move it over to the curb. IIRC, it was some POS Ford Fiesta.

you're just being a nervous nelly. mere inches = enough room. the beepers literally allow soccer mom to get that close with ease. and yes they do detect low objects. you're a car, not a skateboard.

remember most people park by ear! carl

This reminds me of an incident that happened to me about 20 years ago when I had my 993. I took my wife to a restaurant and no sooner I got out of my car, a woman backs up to my car while parking and made contact with my bumper. The impact was at low speed but was hard enough to do some paint damage. The woman's response to me when I asked her if she knew that she bumped into my car was what's the big deal. Bumpers are made to bump. Not sure many Porsche owners share her view. ;)

That summed it up right there.

I know. And it's just going to get worse. The end result will hopefully be that the clueless and disinterested (which is a large percentage of the driving population) will just get shuttled about in their autonomous vehicle pods.

:D

Yep. Clueless and likely don't care.

That's great. And Paul must have been a pretty big boy.

I disagree. Especially running 19" wheels so it sits 0.5" lower than stock, my car is a skateboard. My wife's 3 series BMW looks like an SUV next to it in the garage.:p

*crunch* :(

That's insane.

"Bumpers are made to bump." :banghead:

20 years ago that may have been true--these days bumpers are made to progressively crush!

Just get the other driver's details and let the insurance companies sort it all out.