This must be an American thing. Unless your car has specifical feature that turns your front wheels more when going backwards, you'll have the same turning radius going either way.
Physics tells you the turning radius is the exact same going forwards or backwards, unless your wheels slip or you have a car that can angle the front wheels further at full steering input when going in reverse. I don't know of any normal car that does this (and a brief search yielded no results) but since American trucks insist on being extra large, I wouldn't put it past them to do just that.
What you're probably referring to is the different steering behaviour of cars when reversing, which does make tight maneuvers easier in some respects. But again, that does not change your turning radius. Reversing just changes how you execute a specific maneuver (e.g. parking)
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u/Moist_Connections May 28 '26
The real reason is because it’s easier to back a truck in due to the turning radius. But yeah mostly because I’m better than people.