subject: Vehicle Safety When Parking [print this page] One of the number one ways that people become involved in motor vehicle accidents is when the accident revolves around a parking lot or a situation where parking the car is involved.
I have been witness to plenty of vehicular accidents during my relatively short driving tenure. One time, there was a car accident in which two people pulled into the same parking spot at the same time. How did this happen, you might ask? The parking space was what is notoriously referred to as a pull-through. In the situation, one person was trying to pull through the parking space while the other person was simply trying to park. It was a gentle head-on collision in this particular situation.
Another time, I watched as two people (who were parked next to each other), opened their doors at the same time, forcing the doors to open up into each other. I couldn't believe it. However, the most popular form of vehicular accidents that take place in parking lots occurs when two people are backing out of a parking space at the same time and hit each other. In one recent incident, my boyfriend's mother was just sitting in her car in the parking lot of a local grocery store after she had gone food shopping, when another vehicle in the parking lot backed out of his or her parking space at full speed, slamming into the back of my boyfriend's mother's car.
So, with all of these incidents involving parking lots, what can be done to make shopping more safe? The answer is simple. Pay attention! Especially in parking lots where the traffic volume is high, you always want to make sure that your attention is razor sharp because you never know when you might need it. One thing that I do, which other people may find helpful is I generally avoid going shopping during peak hours when I know that the traffic is going to be bad. This goes for both food shopping, regular shopping as well as heading to the gym. If I cannot avoid the traffic situation, then one other thing that I will do is I will look for the parking space that is the furthest away from all of the other vehicles. Sure, it might mean that I will have to walk a little further to get to the front door, but who is really going to argue with getting a little bit of extra exercise?
If you absolutely must park beside other vehicles, do yourself a favor and take a good, thorough look around you prior to backing out of a parking space or pulling forward to leave. More importantly, make sure that when you are looking around to check to see whether it is clear, make sure that you check ALL of your blind spots. Doing so will make you just a little more safe than you were before.
