Hacker News Reader

Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Given the example show, I would make this a much easier problem by pulling across the center line onto the opposite side of the street, then steering back towards the right hand side. I would time this so I'm parallel with the lines. Now it's a simple back-in job since you're already lined up.

This may or may not be a legal traffic maneuver where you live and obviously can only be performed with both lanes clear.

View on HN

There's just one lane here — the thick line at the top is a barrier (a line of bollards).

Even so, the thing to do here is first turn the wheel to the right and pull past the parking space and pull up to the bollards, then back in.

That trades one problem -- knowing how far to pull forward and how sharply to turn -- for another: known when and how sharply to turn toward the oncoming traffic lane.

The technique described by GP kind of does, but you don't have to get the first part of the maneuver perfect - it just reduces your angle relative to the parking spot. The backward driving then then fixes bad alignment and having a non-0 angle (but with limited space you might need iterate using back-and-forth moves).

Also, for OP: You'll often find that getting into a spot is difficult, but getting out again is trivial. Obviously you could try to just reverse the "leaving movement" as part of your parking maneuver. This can help with finding the perfect spot for starting the parking maneuver.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com