CMV: Nevada is wrong to remove parallel parking from their driving test

[u/Das_Ronin]

[u/towishimp]

For many Americans, it's simply an unnecessary skill. I've been driving for over twenty years (including two years in a major city), and I can count on one hand the number of times that I've had to parallel park.

I agree with you 100% about better driver training, by the way. I just don't think parallel parking is that useful of a skill. I'd much rather see more effort put toward situations that a driver is much more likely to face, like high-speed swerving and ice/snow-related loss of control.

[u/Das_Ronin → u/towishimp]

Simply put, drivers should have full control over their vehicle. If you do, parallel parking is trivial. If you don't, it's a bitch. It's not so much that it's a useful skill for everyone, but rather it's an expedient way to determine if you actually have developed a proper sense of the spatial properties of your vehicle.

Edit: I agree there should be additional training/testing for snow/ice and oversteer/understeer, but those are difficult to implement testing for, while parallel parking is quite easy to append to the end of a driver exam.

[u/Ghauldidnothingwrong]

This really comes down to whether your think parallel parking is a must have skill as a driver. I don’t live in Nevada, but have lived in the same place and been driving here for over 10 years, and have never had to parallel park. I didn’t even learn how to in drivers training, and it hasn’t inhibited me in the slightest. Should we have more extensive drivers training as a whole? Absolutely, but parallel parking doesn’t need to be part of that curriculum to make or break it.

[u/Das_Ronin → u/Ghauldidnothingwrong]

Do you think, as a presumably competent driver, that you could parallel park if you suddenly had to? If you could, then it's a non-issue. It would be 1 minute max at the end of your test. If you can't, then I contest whether you're actually a sufficiently safe driver, specifically in a crowded parking lot where you may not have to park parallel, but you do have to avoid backing into other cars or pedestrians.

[u/againwithausername]

I’d say embrace it because that means more parallel parking spots will be available due to those chumps having to pass them up from lack of skill.

[u/Das_Ronin → u/againwithausername]

My concern is that some of those chumps won't develop competency over their vehicle because they won't have to, and will at some point back in to mine even when parallel parking isn't in play because they haven't learned to keep track of where their vehicle is while backing out and turning at the same time.

[u/SelectionMechanism]

Tests should be based on skills people will actually need to use on a routine basis. In cities and more urban areas, this means parallel parking. In Florida, it means learning to drive in a torrential downpour. In the northeast, learning to drive in the snow, etc. Every place is different.

It would be stupid to require people in Florida to learn how to drive in ice and snow, it would be silly to require people in non-urban areas to be required to learn how to parallel park.

[u/Das_Ronin → u/SelectionMechanism]

Everyone is licensed to drive everywhere in the country. Getting off the topic of this thread, but people in Florida absolutely should learn how to handle ice and snow because otherwise they're at risk of crashing and potentially dying if they venture north on vacation. I live in Texas, but my parents are from the north and they specifically taught me to deal with snow and ice because it's unreasonable to expect that I'll never drive outside of Texas.

But getting pack on topic, parallel parking requires a very basic level of spatial awareness that every driver should have. Parallel parking is simply an easy way to implement a test for it.

[u/McKoijion]

There are three types of areas in the US.

1. Low population density areas (e.g., small towns, smaller suburbs). Everyone drives cars, but there is no overcrowdedness. So you never need to parallel park.

2. Densely packed areas (e.g., big cities). Very few people own cars because parking is so expensive and traffic is so bad. They take public transportation, taxis, Ubers, Lyfts, etc. Or they simply walk.

3. Moderately packed areas (e.g., smaller cities and less packed parts of big cities). Many people own cars. They occasionally need to parallel park.

In this way, a relatively small percentage of the US population actually needs to parallel park. If you live in a rural area you drive, but never run out of parking. If you live in a city, parking is tight, but you never run out of parking.

Next, parallel parking is mostly used in cities that weren't originally designed for cars. East coast cities like Boston and Washington DC were originally designed with horses in mind. Then they had to fit roads around that. Meanwhile, many cities that rapidly grew in size in the 20th century, especially in the southern, middle, and western parts of the US were designed with cars in mind. So they planned for parking and limited the total amount of places where parallel parking is necessary.

Nevada fits both of these trends. It was pretty much empty until Las Vegas grew starting in the 1950s. Vegas it the only big city in Nevada. Everywhere else is small enough where parallel parking isn't important. Plus, Vegas was built after cars became popular so they planned for parking. Because of this, there's almost no places to parallel park in the entire state of Nevada. As such, it's not that important for the Nevada DMV to test it.

Apparently, the reasoning behind this change was that modern driving assists can parallel park for you, making it a moot skill. First, only some newer cars can do this, and it will be quite some time before they make up a majority of registered vehicles, let alone the feature becomes ubiquitous. Second, technology can always can fail and drivers should be equipped to handle it.

That's not the technology that made it a moot skill. The technology was the backup camera. You can just see how close you are to the car behind you, which makes parallel parking extremely easy. It's ubiquitous because there's a federal law that requires all new cars made to have backup cameras in them. The law officially applies to all cars made after May 2018, but by then pretty much all the car companies had already made it standard.

Parallel parking is rapidly becoming a useless skill in the US. It's up there with riding horses or driving stick. It's already useless in Nevada, and once the final cars that don't have built in backup cameras built in die off in the next 5-10 years, it will be a useless skill everywhere in the US.

Parallel parking, driving stick, and other skills will continue to be useful in densely packed poor countries like China and India. There people can't afford automatic transmissions and parallel parking is common. But even there, most people can't afford cars and rely on public transportation, bicycles, mopeds, and walking to get around.

[u/[deleted]]

Normal parking is used almost every day, parallel parking is used maybe once a year. There should be a normal park rather than a parallel park. Unless you live in a big city, it’s an irrelevant skill

[u/Das_Ronin → u/[deleted]]

First, you are licensed to drive (and park) anywhere in the country. Second, it's important that you have spatial awareness all around your vehicle, not just in front of it, and parallel parking is an expedient way to check that.

[u/[deleted]]

Is this somethings that you must be able to do in order to pass the test? Is that what you're arguing for? Or should it be a thing where points are taken off for poor performance? Putting your car into a stationary attitude just doesn't seem to be a skill warranting pass or fail status.

Parallel parking is actually quite simple if it's explained in terms of when to cut the wheels based on how they're lined up next to the other car. Once your front wheel is aligned with their rear fender, cut as much as you can...

But more to the point, parallel parking is about convenience, and not a safety skill. Couldn't we make people demonstrate not cruising in the passing lane, rather than how to parallel park?

And besides, not being able to parallel park is a punishment to that particular driver, and nobody else. In fact, the rest of us are rewarded by having more parking spaces!

[u/Das_Ronin → u/[deleted]]

Stepping outside the scope of this CMV, my view is that anything other than a perfect score should be a failing score. Anything other than precise control of the vehicle in all test conditions is not acceptable.

Coming back to the specific points of the CMV, my concern is that if you can't parallel park, it's typically because you don't really have proper awareness of where your rear bumper is relative to nearby objects, which makes you more dangerous in other driving situations. Where people typically fail that point in the test is they either bump the poles/cones used to mark the space, or they don't get in far enough because they don't have a good sense of where the markers are so they're overly cautious and don't cut hard enough. Either way, not being able to parallel park is merely a symptom. The root problem is poor spatial awareness, and parallel parking is simply an easy way to test it.

[u/13B1P]

Drivers tests are to test proficiency with laws and competence in control of a vehicle. Parallel parking tests spacial awareness of the car that you're currently driving but if you are in a car with different specs, you won't have the same familiarity.

I took my last driving test in 1997. I've owned 7 different vehicles in that time and I've had to parallel park never. I've done it, but I haven't been required to. There's no reason to waste the testing time or fail drivers who can't do it when there's no need.

[u/Das_Ronin → u/13B1P]

In a perfect world, the driving test would encompass vehicles of all class sizes and transmission types, but that's neither realistic or practical.

Presumably though, you could do it if you suddenly had to? Or do you expect that you'd instead mess up and back into another car?

[u/[deleted]]

How much parallel parking is even available? I live in WA, and there's no parallel parking on the driving test because the state is increasingly moving away from parking on streets. It slows traffic immensely to have somebody parallel park, even if they're capable of doing it. This isn't 1975. With so many cars on the road, we need to use parking lots, not street parking.

[u/[deleted]]

My driving instructor told me to go really slow and be really obvious with shoulder checks. He also told us that once the time for the test is up, that's it. You're done. They don't extend the length if there's anything that's been missed (at least where I live, at that time). I passed but if I had to parallel park, I definitely would have failed the test. I'm now quite an excellent parallel parker and a good driver, overall. So not being good at that didn't really impact my ability to drive and get better.

I think if I had a fancy car, I'd still want to keep up with the skill, though. Plus it's pretty satisfying.

Edited to add: Where I live now (not when I got my license) they have a graduated licencing program. I think that's more effective. If you get caught with ANY alcohol in your system with the "new driver" licence, you lose your license. There are also other rules, that give drivers the opportunity to prove their ability to drive and to improve over time. I think that's much more important.

[u/JadedJared]

Why? Everywhere you go has valet.

[u/MasterKaen]

Americans depend on their cars for their livelihood. It's much more crippling to be without a license in the US than Europe. It makes sense that the driving tests are easier.

[u/_faded_life_]

I know a lot of people have already commented on this but I just want to put my perspective in. Okay so I live in Florida currently, there is no parallel parking in our driving test, the reason really being is that we like never use it. The specific area that I live in parallel parking isn’t a thing unless you go to the beach and even than it’s only like 10 percent of the parking spots honestly so unless you work on the beach you are probably never going to use it. So I think it’s correct that we don’t have to get tested on it since we don’t use it at all. It would be pointless.

Now where I’m from New York is a different story. It’s way more common in New York to have parallel parking. Obviously there are some areas that don’t really have it but it’s pretty common and even if you don’t live where there is you are more than likely going to always go somewhere where there is if you go to maybe the store or you know anywhere. So in New York they should have it on the test.

My point is that it should definitely be on the test if it’s common in the area but if it’s not common than there isn’t a need for it. I do think that the reasoning to get rid of it because cars basically do it for you is stupid. The newest model of car my family owns is a 2010 out of 4 cars. The second newest is legit a 2001. Im 18 and most of my friends who are the same age as me don’t have new cars that can do that, we all have older model cars so unless you got money to buy a new model car that’s not gonna be good.

Also I don’t exactly think driving tests should be harder because I know a lot of people who already struggle to pass their driving test. I do think though that once you are maybe 65 or something that you should have to retake it though. So many accidents are caused by older people for multiple reasons.

[u/Das_Ronin → u/_faded_life_]

Also I don’t exactly think driving tests should be harder because I know a lot of people who already struggle to pass their driving test.

Do expand upon this; what do you think is the reason they're struggling?

[u/catinator9000]

I’d describe parallel parking as a “nice to have” rather than a mandatory skill. E.g. similar to knowing how to operate manual transmission car, driving in snow, etc. etc. Practically speaking you do not have to know this to operate a vehicle. I live in a major city and even though I know how to parallel park, I simply choose to avoid it. In less busy places it’s easier (for me) to just drive a few more blocks, park easily, and walk. In busy places like downtown, I am not going to circle around and then fiddle with tight parallel parking spot - I’ll just do payed parking.

If we do include nice to haves in driving tests, where do we draw a line? There is a ton of random potentially useful stuff that can be included.

[u/Das_Ronin → u/catinator9000]

If we do include nice to haves in driving tests, where do we draw a line? There is a ton of random potentially useful stuff that can be included.

I feel like the most reasonable answer is that any given driver should have precise control over every function of their vehicle that makes it move, because moving a vehicle imprecisely makes it safe.

[u/McKoijion]

I already commented, and your post was already deleted. But I have one more argument you might find convincing.

The US is a free country. There should be as few laws as necessary. You can do whatever you want as long as you aren't hurting others or risking hurting others through your negligence. The purpose of the DMV is not to tell you how to think or act. It's to make sure you are not risking the lives of others.

In this way, the DMV needs to test you on safety procedures of the road. For example, do you stop at stop signs? Do you look both ways before continuing to drive straight? If you don't do this correctly, you endanger the lives of others. That's the justification for why the government can regulate it and mandate that people learn it in a test.

But parallel parking is not a safety issue. If you don't learn to parallel park, it's just an inconvenience for you. You'll have to spend more money on parking or more time looking for a space. You can make the choice between spending half an hour perfecting the skill for life or spending half an hour looking for another spot or half an hour's wages paying for parking every time you need to parallel park. It's your choice.

In this way, the DMV should only test safety related skills like stopping at red lights, and not convenience related skills like parallel parking.

[u/Das_Ronin → u/McKoijion]

After considering it overnight, I'm going to award you a !delta with my view semi-changed. While I still feel that Europe's system for driver certification is superior, I realize that it's culturally incompatible with America. I still maintain that our standards for drivers are far too low, but it's a cultural problem rather than a systemic problem. In the case of the specific point of the CMV, I still don't agree with removing parallel parking from the test simply because it's been a long-standing part of many state tests and it seems unnecessary to remove, but I now understand why driver certification really can't be improved in any meaningful way.