One thing I've noticed is that when you are trying to emerge from a difficult side entrance or leave an end-on parking space a passing Spanish driver sometimes puts hand on horn and stands on his rights rather than give you a break. This is by no means universal, the exit from our parking area is difficult and blind and often a Spanish driver will realise this and lend a hand, but it is far more common than in the UK.

You will also find that if you have a foreign registered car - particularly UK but I noticed it in PT regs too - that Spanish drivers will do anything to be in front of you no matter how small and underpowered their car is.

I happen to drive a nondescript looking car which is very powerful, usually I just let them go but occasionally, if they really p... me off, I just leave them standing

There are lots of things that irritate me about driving habit here, some of which mentioned here, but one common thing that drives me nuts is when parking on the street, people will open their driver-side door without even looking in the mirror.

So I have to swerve out of the way unexpectedly, and if there's someone in the lane next to me, I have no choice but to slam on the brakes to avoid taking the offender's door off. To make things worse, they just look at you like you're some sort of idiot.

When I park on the street, I always look in the mirror and wait until nobody is coming before opening the door. Always, without fail. Maybe I'm just too cautious, but I think that's not only sensible, but courteous as well.

It happens so often that I have gotten to the point where I am seriously considering taking someone's door off.

I know, I know.. that wouldn't solve anything...

I hate backing out of those parking stalls. Lots of people wail on their horn, even if they were 100's of meters away when your start to back out, and just happen to be driving at 2x the speed limit.

When I encounter someone trying to back out, I always wait for them. I know it's difficult to see who may be coming when you back out, and to wail on the horn is simply selfish and rude.

Surely you should back into the parking space;then it is easy to see what's coming when exiting.
I understand it is illegal to back out onto the road.I see people every day backing out of their drives-it's dangerous and lazy.

Especially the covered ones where if you fail to concentrate you get the dreaded scrrrrrraaapping as you hit the off side post that you failed to see, been there done that lol

Yes my (Spanish) brother in-law is a car nut and says that I am inconsiderate by reversing out of parking bays.

Good drivers always reverse into the parking space!

If it's illegal, then how do you get out of parking like this?

Or are you just supposed to leave your car and collect parking tickets forever?

Smart drivers drive in, while stupid drivers are busy getting their cars into a position to reverse.

Surprised your Spanish brother in law doesn't know that, but I suppose they're a bit slow of the mark in that part of the world.

We have lots of these around here (sorry only picture I could find, it's somewhere in US or Canada)



These are obviously designed to pull in forward and park.
Now tell me, how do you back into this without doing something really stupid?

... and worse, how do you get out if you reverse-in, without doing something stupid?

..and again, if it's illegal to back out, then are you supposed to just leave the car there forever?

Me tinks someting wong wit you logical.

Little problem in that particular example given reasonable clearance between vehicles to begin turning immediately.

There is sufficient distance before reaching solid line to give adequate visibility to establish all is clear after which it is only necessary to cross the solid line by a marginal distance.

Also slant parking is much easier to enter and it is not necessary to swing right out into the middle of the road before pulling in.

Actually, I think you are probably mistaken. Spanish drivers do look in the mirror and wait till they see you coming and then open the door.

Yes, Dick, everything you say is true, but that wasn't the point.

I and someone else expressed our displeasure that people honk at you when you're backing out of a parking space.

Then someone said that a "proper parker" would always back-in to such parking spaces, and another suggested that it's illegal to back out of them anyway.

Well, we have a lot of these angled street parking spaces around here (and mostly on one-way streets), and there really is no practical way to "back" into them, being that they are angled the wrong way for that (and people would get pretty riled if you tried), nor can you leave the space without backing out, which is when people honk at you (and where this particular debate started).

Even if you (stupidly) managed to back in to one of these, leaving the space would have you going the wrong direction down a one-way street.

Quite.

And even in right-angled spaces it's often not really practical to reverse in. If you tried it you would probably find someone would nip in forwards anyway - I've seen it happen.

You only find these on slow speed limit urban streets so backing out shouldn't really be too much of a problem given a bit of consideration on all sides.

Many of the streets they're on here are very busy. Poor engineering perhaps, but I still stop and wait when someone is trying to back out, instead of honking at them and whizzing by in an angry frenzy.

But then again, few would claim I'm "average"