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When you first start driving it's pretty straightforward and basic, and shouldn*t take long to get the controls down to a science. One thing that even veteran drivers have a problem doing is parallel parking, which trust me isn*t as hard as it seems. Most people are intimidated by having to even consider parallel parking and a lot of people will find another parking lot if it means saving them from parallel parking. Most regions this will be fine but when you*re in a downtown of a metropolitan area you*d be lucky to find a parking spot period, which means if it means you need to parallel park you better make sure you know how. I would recommend that to get rid of some of the nerves you practice in an empty parking lot using cones. If you hit a cone then you know you would have hit a car so it can make great practice. All you need to do is set-up the cones so that they would make the same distance as a car would and then you can begin practicing. First you'll probably want to know how to parallel park which is most likely why you*re reading this article so lets get down to teaching you how to parallel park.

The most important thing about parallel parking is confidence, you don*t need much skill other then the basics of driving which you should know if you*re driving. The problem is a lot of people feel parallel parking is a whole new world of driving and when they think about it they become scared and lose all confidence whatsoever. When this happens you will be more prone to actually hitting a vehicle then if you were to take a deep breath and think about what you needed to do in the situation at hand.

In order you should follow these tips if you*re not quite sure how to parallel park.

Make sure the first thing you do is turn on your signal light in the direction of the parking space so that traffic behind you knows that you*re going to be parking.

When beginning to approach the parking spot makes sure your back bumper is inline with the back bumper of the car parked in front of the parking spot you want.

Allow for roughly two feet of space between your car and the car beside you and begin reversing, once the car starts reversing turn your wheel as much as it can go towards the curb.

Continue reversing slowly until the back of your front door reaches the back bumper of the car in front of your parking spot and then turn the wheel as far it can go away from the curb.

Now all you need to do is continue turning the wheel away from the curb and reversing slowly until into the parking spot.

Once you*re done getting reversed into the parking space you can now pull forward a bit to center yourself with the rest of the cars.

Ideally once you*ve finished this you should be roughly six inches from the curb so that you*re not sticking out into traffic as you don*t want to lose a mirror.