Parking / Parkplätze

Our driveway in New Jersey is a tough one to park in. If you pull into it, it can be next to impossible to back out of depending on traffic and parked cars. If you back into it, you have to be heading east so that you are on the right side of the street in order to execute that maneuver. Or, you have to be like Peter. When heading west, Peter pulls into the wrong lane (much to my horror, every single time) and then backs into the driveway.

One day Peter did this, pulling into a marked parking space, nose heading in the wrong direction, preparing to back into the driveway. Before he could put the car into reverse, a Pennington police car pulled up next to him (also heading in the wrong direction) and unrolled his window. "You know you can't park your car like that," he said. "It's pointed in the wrong direction." Peter explained what he was doing, the police man was skeptical but satisfied, and we got the car parked in our driveway.

This was a number of years ago, but the event has stuck with me because I just don't understand why it matters which direction your car is facing when it's parked. I'm not the only one who thinks that way. Here is Austria, it doesn't matter. As long as your car is parked somewhere near a curb and out of the flow of traffic (in a zone where parking is allowed, of course), it can be heading in any direction!