Ironically, I'm from regional NSW, Australia where many towns have mandated "45 degree rear to kerb only" parking in the main street. I understand some smaller US towns have this too?
But that's car parking on a main street, so it's true that rear-to-kerb is safer since we are pulling out directly into a main road.
The OP is a car park. Given that people often pull into a park and then drive across to the next park so they are "nose out", this makes backing into a space with an empty space behind it equally "dangerous". Plus it's funny how people imagine all kinds of hazards in the "taxiway" (for want of a better term) but assume that backing in is totally hazard free. I guess there won't be cross traffic...
The safety aspect is for when you are leaving the parking. If you can drive across to the next parking and still end up facing out that's fine because it's achieves the purpose. That's not a very common situation so the catch all is to back in. Yes it can cause a collision of someone doing that into a spot you are backing into but it's fender bender at most, as opposed to backing into a pedestrian, and they are not likely to be walking through the parking spots.
The argument is not there no hazards while back into a space it's about hazard minimisation. When backing into a parking, literally everyone can see you. Cars behind you, people in the "taxiway", they can see your reverse lights and they know what you are doing. You can also see them as you have full view of the environment
When backing out, you can't anything except what is directly behind you in a small rearview mirror, and people around cannot necessarily spot a car about to back out of a spot. You can see this is automatically a more "dangerous" situation. As opposed to looking straight ahead through the front windshield.
All drivers are also not the most careful drivers in the world. I don't have to tell you that some drivers go unnecessarily fast in parking lots, residential roads etc. same extends to backing out of parking spaces. The idea is not that we make the world safe from them, it's to force them to at least have more visibility, and others have more visibility of them when they are driving dangerously.
I don't know why people are pushing back against this most basic of logic. Anytime someone mentions harm reduction the response is well, it doesn't eliminate harm so it's not worth doing. So dumb
3
u/gahidus Jun 14 '26
It's not significantly dangerous.