Well, I know a lot of ADDers have similar spatial perception problems to mine, so I figure I might as well post this here...

I have a driving test scheduled for September 11th of this year (yeah, great omen, I know)-- as it stands, that's less than two weeks away-- and though I feel fairly good about the actual road test (that is, if my attention is good enough on the day of the test and I don't mishear "right" as "left" or vice versa, heh), there's still one thing that absolutely, utterly stumps me:

PARALLEL PARKING.

Yes, it's part of the test here in Georgia... and with my horrible visual-spatial judgment, I honestly haven't the foggiest clue how to do it. I mean, I understand it theoretically, and I can even do it in a little Flash animation from a top-down perspective that I came across a while back. But I cannot manage to line up the car as it's usually taught, from the actual three-dimensional perspective of the driver's seat. How do you tell when your rear bumper is lined up with the cones (yes, they use cones rather than an actual car, though I'd probably have more success with the latter)? How do you know when exactly you're at a 45-degree angle or whatever you need to be at before you straighten the wheel? How do you tell when you're clear of the other car and can safely turn back? I literally cannot judge these things reliably!

Anyone here manage to pass the parallel-parking portion of the driving test? If so, how did you do it? Share your wealth of knowledge, O great masters of the mystical art of reverse parking...

For parking between two cars, pull up alongside the front, and swing in. Then line your car up with the car behind you and swing it in making the line along the back line up with your car in your rear view mirror.

For between cones: go before the test and learn to do it by muscle memory. Heh

KMiller: "Swing in"? I'm going to need a *lot* more explicit instructions than that! And what line along the back are you referring to? I'm really confused. :o

And as for practicing in the parking lot-- oh, trust me, I've tried that. How do you tell exactly what you're doing wrong when, out of ten tries, you either keep hitting the curb or being half a car width away from it, using the very same reference points each time? O_o

<a href="http://www.mpi.mb.ca/english/dr_ed/InCarActivities.html">This site</a> has a few suggestions that, if combined, might end up working for me... but I'll have to try them to see that they're not horribly off.

Basically, what I came up with, after reading a few entries on that page, was this sort of formula:

Get as far in front of the parking space as you can, directly beside it.
Keep backing, until the cone directly in front of your space that's farthest from the curb just appears in the rear passenger-side window.
Turn the wheel all the way to the right.
Keep backing until the cone directly behind the space and farthest from the curb appears in the rear driver's-side window.
Turn the wheel all the way to the left.
Keep backing until the car is straight; then pull forward slightly to balance the space out.


In other words, you'll want to watch for the two cones that are farthest away from the curb, one in each window.

Of course, I don't know how well this will work in an actual car, but it seems to work in theory when illustrated from a top-down view...

Whoa, I just found this:

http://www.cvschools.org/cvhs/departments/drivered/stallparking.html

Now *that* might come in useful. Well, once I figure out how to tell where the rear bumper is, of course... but the other two reference points will still come in handy.

Someone mentioned on another forum that when something just enters the back passenger-side window, it should be lined up with the rear bumper. That helps a lot.

I already had seen this reference (http://www.nidb.org/answera.html) for the front of the car, which worked wonders for that particular aspect of my spatial perception... maybe between those two reference points, I might be able to get things to work!

One last thread-- I know, I'm replying at an insane rate to my own post...

<a href="http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20040705&tid=1242060">This comment from a UserFriendly forum member</a> may be the best guide I've seen so far. If you have the same problems judging spatial relationships that I do, and you need something that's literally visible from the driver's perspective to line up with, this will help so much.

Is it necessary to pass the parallel parking portion of the test? In my state, failing the parallel parking portion does not necessarily make one fail the entire test, assuming one does well on the rest of the test (which uses a system of points). I failed the parallel parking portion, but still passed the test.

I have studied parallel parking 2-3 hours everyday for 4 weeks .We went to an open mall and put the carts in front and to back...AT first days I could not see anything I kept bumping to carts...(We still have the scraches :))
Then I quickly realized with music in the background I don't get distracted on the road and I can calm myself down by singing along...After 4 weeks I had the exam I could only use 3 moves to parallel park but I got in with two moves.Still I am really good at parallel parking ! (Yeah sometimes I bump to other cars but there's no harm,honest!)
Just try to give yourself time.It took one year for me to learn how to drive.(no no I am not a retard :) )I am still singing when I am driving and parking but there's no harm in that right?

I ended up cancelling my test for now because I'm still having trouble observing things *on* the road. Ah well. Stop signs and stop lights just don't seem to stand out well enough for me to notice them!

I did, however, figure out how to parallel park in the process, though. I used a technique similar to what I mentioned in post #4 of this thread (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=90994&postcount=4), except watching for the cone closest to the curb behind the car in the driver-side window. Worked perfectly!