OT: I've never needed parking sensors

[Jethro_uk]

At 5mph ?

[Jethro_uk]

On a cold day it's usually obvious. Another thing to thing about in the race for EVs

[Tim Streater]

convex

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is odd. Mine will only come on *automatically* when I select reverse gear. And they cancel once above 5mph.

I am fairly sure this is a programmable setting, but since it suits me reasonably well, I have left it as default.

There is a manual button as well which use when moving forward into a parking slot

[R D S]

This is what happened with the missus, she was adjacent to shrubbery and hadn't noticed there was also a bollard. I've always thought bollards should be taller, why they'd be too short to see from inside a car I cannot understand.

[NY]

Yes. Parking sensors with an audible warning have their place, but for accuracy in getting a close as possible without hitting, you need cameras. As regards reversing to a trailer, I have seen a device that you attach between the towbar and the hitch when the car is within a few inches, which pulls the trailer the last bit (both in the forwards/backwards sense and the left/right sense) to avoid you having to get the towbar *exactly* under the hitch so the hitch will drop onto the towbar ball.

The scariest parallel parking I had to do was in a long-wheelbase Transit-sized van that we rented when we were moving house. I needed to stop in town to collect something, and the only parking was along the side of a street. So I found a suitable sized gap and got on with it. The van's reversing camera was perfect for checking the distance from the car behind, and luckily the front end was easy to judge for clearance from the car in front of me. But it took a while to get used to a very convex part of the passenger door mirror that pointed down to show the distance from the rear wheel to the kerb so I knew when to start steering hard to the left to tuck into the kerb. But I did it first time. The only help I needed was to know when my back end was level with that of the car ahead, so I was correctly positioned to start reversing in: difficult to judge that with only a door mirror, and obviously the reversing camera cannot see sideways to tell using that.

[NY]

Yes, unless you've got parking sensors or someone to guide you in with continuous feedback (*), you reach a point when you get so close to a low bollard that it disappears from the bottom of your rear window, and if you are lined up with the space, it is not visible in either door mirror. Bollards need to be tall enough that they are above the bottom of the window.

(*) As opposed to "you're miles way - why are you going so slowly" followed by silence and then "you're going too fast - you've just hit the kerb", with no "1 foot to go - slowly now, 6 inches, 3 inches, stop" in between.

[Rob Morley]

All they need is a big vape pen to supplement the electronic engine noise simulation.

[Jim gm4dhj ...]

[pinnerite]

That's the word!

[ARW]

I always deliberately reverse as close as I can to the neighbours car with the van.

Usually into it and then I move a couple of cm forward. He's never noticed or said anything.

It's an anti theft device for the back doors.

My last f*ck up was actually this last night/this morning when I got stuck on the grass.

Lou did say don't park there you will be stuck in the morning.

I eventually got out but it needs returfing.

[NY]

Reversing camera and/or central rear-view mirror are useful for seeing directly behind you (but not much use for showing the sides of the car), whereas door mirrors are used for judging the distance between a wall/hedge and the side of your car or for seeing where your kerbside rear wheel is in relation to the kerb when parallel parking. Both types of mirror/camera are essential: neither one does everything. I've heard of some people who can

*estimate* where their rear wheel is when parallel parking (to judge when to turn parallel to the kerb) without needing to angle the door mirror down to show the rear wheel and (when it comes into view) the kerb. I could estimate to the nearest foot, but when you are parallel parking you need to get the tyres as close to the kerb as possible, so you need to get them about 1-2" away - that's too close for me to do by estimation/magic/guesswork alone. Of course some people park by feel: when the tyre nudges the kerb, they've reached it so they know to go forwards a smidgen and then start to turn.

[SteveW]

When clearing out my M-I-L's house after she died, I had to enter the narrow, cul-de-sac, turn around at the second 90° bend in the road, where the space was just a couple of feet longer than my vehicle and then reverse along the road to the house. No rear view cameras, on my own and in a 7.5t truck ... and it was the first time I'd driven one!

[SteveW]

Then press the button and turn the sensors off?

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

The bigger the vehicle, the more they tend to be square box shape and the easier they are to see the corners - making them generally easier to drive, I always found. I would rather struggle to manoeuvrer a large van, than my car in and awkward location.