How do you park?

Several rules for parking, in no particular order.

1. On the end spot when possible but not an end where people cutting the corner can clip the bumper.
2. Next to a clean small 4 door car that is parked in the center of his spot or even shifted to the right
3. On the driver's side of the other car - I might leave before them.
a. Passenger side OK at work, not many door swinging kids at work
4. Next to an expensive car that is well cared for.
5. Next to an older car that is pristine.

Things to avoid:

1. Cars that are a complete mess- they don't care about their car, why would they care about yours?
2. Cars that are parked particularly poorly- it makes smaller spaces and these are careless (or unskilled) drivers.
3. Cars that have chipped paint along the back edge of their door or on their door "bumper."
4. Cars that have very large drivers.
5. Cars that you have witnessed with goober drivers. Carelessness is a way of life.


I have personally seen the following:

Small 4 door sedan (car A) parked a little toward their driver's side line, an empty space, next vehicle a small 4 door parked offset to the passenger side leaving a huge space in the middle. Someone pulled in and parked a nice car (Car X) perfectly in this beautiful spot and left quickly. Car A's driver had not exited the vehicle yet- when she did I noticed she was a larger woman (sing "I like big butts and I cannot lie, you other brothers can't deny she is a door dinger"). She harshly tagged the car getting out on the driver's side. She then proceeded to walk around to the other side, open the front passenger door and lean in to dig around inside the car. It is a small car and a big woman- the door was forced to open all the way. As she is bent over picking up stuff her "booty" was working the door back and forth. This front passenger door was, thankfully, just barely able to reach the panel on Car X. She left a very small vertical scratch on victim. It almost didn't even seem to touch it from a distance since the door almost didn't touch it. I had to go back and check it to see. I grabbed some stuff from my car and rubbed out the spot in 10 seconds, it was mostly white paint from car A's door. Barely noticealbe after that.

Looking at car A's doors all of them were missing large amounts of paint all along the back (dinging) edge of the doors. The driver's door looked like it had been sanded clean for about 14 inches.

I mentioned to car X's driver that she should avoid parking next to that vehicle for the rest of time.

The moral of the story is "avoid chipped door paint cars at all cost, even the passenger side at work whenever possible." If they can ding you they will. Also, avoid the heavy drivers (this was added to my avoid list at that time).

I have 2 door dings on my car- 1 small chip fixed with touch-up paint and one very small dent (you can't even see it unless you know its there and look straight down the side with the right light) on a daily driver that parks in a garage with tight spaces (so small I checked the parking lot design books to see what "standard" they used to line the spaces). The lines are the "box" type with about 12" in the empty space. The tires on the Magnum can just touch the line on both sides when parked exactly straight. The "door swing" space is basically that empty space inside the line box. They are angle in parking to allow them to be smaller. Ascii art:

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