Hey folks. For the last year, I have been parking in a garage that is for state employees only. I noticed the other day that the cars on the two lower floors, which are for VIPs and state cars have a higher rate of cars that back into their “reserved” space.
I park on the 5th floor because I would rather have one consistent bad parking space that I don’t have to think about, then occasionally try for a good spot. I get to see most parked cars on the way up.
I have some ideas why these cars would back into their “reserved” space but I’d like to hear what you folks might think the reason(s) may be.
I often back into parking spaces if I have a few extra seconds and am not going to hold anyone else up - makes it easier to get out later. I have no idea if anyone else does this for the same reason - likely though.
It’s the bumper stickers and badges. When your rear end is advertising “Pastafarian”, and “My other car is a Smith & Wesson”, and “Gore-Lieberman 2000” (hey, who ever removes old bumper stickers?) … you’re less likely to be vandalized by deranged co-workers. Also discretion … Civil Service VIPs are supposed to be officially neutral and non-partisan, no? Backing in to hide your (car’s) ass is the government employee equivalent of noblesse oblige.
You two made some good observations. I thought about the quick getaway, aspect. This may also be safer at the end of the work day.
I also thought it was the man thing too but to show off the car emblem. Almost all of the cars that I noticed were higher end cars. Fancy man car driving didn’t occur to me. (That’s why I ask these questions.)
What didn’t make sense to me was why state cars would be parked the same way since reading the license plate would be more difficult.
It’s sometimes demographic, too. Where I live I notice that the practice is by far most prevalent in working class, particularly factory-type, settings. It can be seen as a sign of driving prowess to back into a spot than out of it. And, of course, the easy getaway, which is a reward for one’s mad skillz.
I’m sometimes nervous about backing out of spaces in parking garages. It’s sometimes hard to see far past the cars on either side to see who may be coming up the ramp, and some people drive parking garage ramps at breakneck speed. Their speed plus my difficulty in vision could end with some nasty rear-end damage for me…
In that case I’d think you’d want to pull in frontways-- to show both the make AND the model…
Sounds like security to me. Harder to read the plate, and hence run it, and find out who the car belongs to/that it’s a gov’t car.
Or perhaps it’s even preferable for some reason, on the part of the office. At the main office where I work, they decided everyone parking on the street should back in (it’s a closed street; everyone parks perpendicular to the curb, to fit more cars in). No idea why. I get down there once every few months, maybe, and hadn’t been there since it changed, so I totally forgot… all day people were asking me, “Is that you parked the wrong way there?” Yes, yes it is (but I don’t care enough to go move my car…).
That wouldn’t factor in in Minnesota, where all state-registered vehicles are required by law to have plates both front and back. Thus, a Minnesotan backing into a spot would have nothing to do with stealth measures.
State vehicles in West Virginia have green plates. Red plates are for county vehicles. We have a newspaper reporter who regularly writes about who was driving their assigned vehicle to places they shouldn’t be driving. They may explain the state cars backing in to their spot.
Ah … As Nano said, “single (rear) plate in WV” was a missing clue. Most states (32/50) require front and rear plates. Curiously, those that don’t are mostly former CSA or other red states.
I was once ticketed for illegally missing the front plate on my Miata (MX-5). Somehow, my argument that the plate ruined the sleek lines of the front fascia and interfered with my custom cold air intake was unpersuasive to both the cop and the judge. But most guys in the Miata Club budgeted for these fixer tickets as part of the aesthetic cost of having fun.
Since the post I quoted referred to a backed-in vehicle making it difficult to read the plate, it made sense to me that we were talking about rear-only plates…
I think you guys have missed the clue mutepoint gave in his first paragraph:
When you reverse (back) into a parking space, you tie up traffic longer that if you pull directly into the parking space. These people are VIPs!!! You are supposed to notice them, and wait upon them. Placing the VIP spaces are at the bottom of the garage increases the number of people who must wait. Then again, if the VIPs there are anything like the one’s I run into here, they don’t cruise into work until long after the working stiffs are at their desks.
Of course, but the thread was not stipulated as a rear-plates-only discussion.
BTW, Em, I didn’t suggest that backing in was only a guy thing. I suggested it was mostly a guy thing, and I proposed motivations for the practice from a guy’s, particularly a working guy’s, standpoint. Which, as it turns out, I am genetically and experientially qualified to do.
I think Dave’s got it. They don’t care who has to wait while they back in, and they’re in no big hurry to get in to work, so they can take their time parking. I would add a third reason: they aren’t worried about some S.O.B. stealing their target parking space while they line up the approach.
For myself, I’m with Katherine. I back in to parking spaces because it’s a lot safer pulling out. That brings us to a fourth reason: at the end of the day, the parking spots on the bottom levels are riskier to back out of, because there will be more traffic coming past them from the upper levels.
It could also be partly a peer behavior / mass behavior thing. Like looking up into the sky at nothing. One person starts it, then another looks up, and before long everyone’s looking up without knowing why. First a few VIPs decided that parking head-out was the cool VIP-ey thing to do, and before long the behavior spread through that physically separated (and status separated) population.
Mutie, do you know any of the VIP parkers well enough to actually ask them why they park that way? The answers could be interesting.
I’m not completely convinced it is safer. Depends partly on your vehicle, I guess. Measuring my full-size Mitsubishi sedan, it’s 96 inches from my eyes to the tip of the front bumper, but only 90 inches to the rear bumper. Which means that for a given eye-line when pulling out of the space, there’s actually more of the car sticking out when I’m driving forward than backing out. Of course, better forward visibility and fewer neck-twisting contortions may more than compensate, and less time stopped dead while reversing directions.
If you’re stuck parked between two behemoth SUVs or vans, as always seems to happen, you’re basically pulling out blind anyway, forwards or backwards. It’s one of the few cases when I swallow my compunction and pray to the old gods and the new. As the saying goes: there are no atheists in combat .. or in parking garages.
Good question. I have no idea who these VIPs are. I’m not part of the class structure where I work. They are state employees, I am a university employee. It’s a very good possibility that they are my office friends, lunch buddies, or people that I interact with but seeing as how practically nobody dresses up, including the people in charge, I have no clue. Putting on airs isn’t common around these parts. But I was suprised by all the fancy cars, so maybe there are people putting on airs and I just don’t see or notice.
Funny story: Once I was in a VIP meeting and a woman walked into the room, looked around, stayed a few minutes and left. I thought she was the cleaning lady deciding whether she should walk to the other side of the room to empty the gabage can. She was the state regional director. She became someone I liked. Everyone else was scared to death of her.
Placing the VIP spaces are at the bottom of the garage increases the number of people who must wait. Then again, if the VIPs there are anything like the one’s I run into here, they don’t cruise into work until long after the working stiffs are at their desks.
