How to reverse park: the mirror method
Reversing into a bay looks harder than driving in nose first. It is actually the easier way to park, once you know where to stop and what to watch. This is how to reverse park with your mirrors, one step at a time.
Why reverse in
The wheels that steer are at the front. When you reverse, the back of the car goes where you point it and the front swings round to follow. So you can put the back of the car into a tight space and let the front sort itself out. Driving in nose first is the other way round: the back cuts the corner and you end up crooked.
Reversing in also means you drive out forwards, looking at the traffic. That is the safe way to leave a busy car park.
Before you start
- Set your mirrors low. Tip both door mirrors down a touch so you can see the painted lines and the kerb. You can put them back afterwards.
- Go slowly. Everything in this method happens at walking pace. If you are moving faster than you could walk, you are moving too fast.
- Look around first. Reverse is the gear where people and trolleys appear from nowhere. Check over both shoulders before the car moves, and keep checking.
The five steps
- Drive past the bay. Stay about a metre from the front of the parked cars, a car door’s width. Go past your bay until your shoulder is level with the far edge of it. Then stop. Most people stop too early. If you do, the front of your car swings into the next one.
- Full lock, then reverse. Select reverse. Turn the wheel all the way towards the bay. Now let the car creep back.
- Watch the mirror on the bay side. The line of the bay will appear in that mirror, then run down the glass. Your job is to keep that line steady in the mirror, not to look at the bay through the window.
- Straighten up when you are square. When the car is pointing straight down the bay, both door mirrors show a line the same distance away. Turn the wheel back to straight and keep creeping.
- Stop before the kerb. Use the rear-view mirror or the camera. Stop when the back bumper is a hand’s width from the kerb or the wall, then put the wheel straight.
Fixing it as you go
- The line is getting closer to you in the mirror. You turned too early. Pull forward a little with the wheel straight, then reverse again.
- The line is getting further away. You turned too late. Give it more lock, or pull forward and start the turn a bit later next time.
- The front is going to touch the next car. Stop. Pull forward, straighten up, and start again from a metre further past the bay.
A shunt is not a failure. Almost every good park has one correction in it. The bad park is the one where you keep going and hope.
The mistakes everyone makes
- Turning the wheel before the car is far enough past the bay.
- Looking over the shoulder at the bay instead of at the mirror, so the front swings wide.
- Going too fast to notice the line moving.
- Stopping the moment the car is inside the lines, still crooked. Straight matters. It is what gets you out again.
Practise it for free
Tuckbay is a free car park in your browser where you park by the mirrors alone. You cannot turn your head. Three mirrors and a reversing camera are all you get, and they show what real ones would. Everyone gets the same car park each day, and at the end you get three numbers: how many times you had to go forward again, how straight you finished, and how far off the middle you were.
Then there is a tight car park in Tokyo, and two kerbside spaces in New York and Amsterdam for the other kind of parking.
Play Tuckbay free → — or read the learn to drive game for roundabouts and junctions.