Welcome dear reader. It’s a beautiful bright sunny day here in the Philippines, just north of the NCR (Metro Manila) and I’ve got a few minutes to write. My car is comfortably backed into my narrow little carport, all tucked away waiting for me to give the call for action to go somewhere.
Could I ask a simple question? For those of you who drive, may I ask if you are a good driver? Even an expert driver? (Silly question, of course, isn’t it?) especially if you are of the male persuasion it goes without saying that you are good, even better than good. Heck if you’re an Australian, you answer to that question I just asked was probably FIGJAM (no that’s not some other-wordily bread spread like Vegemite, it stands for “F**k I’m Good, Just Ask Me, LoL).
Well, Are You As Good Backing Up?
One thing I have noticed here in the Philippines, in both foreigner and Filipino drivers is, a great many otherwise competent drivers are just no darn good at backing up.
Recently I had a kitchen range picked up by a service tech for repair/overhaul and then delivered back to my house after it was finished. The technician, a man in his forties who drives a small “mommy van” type Nissan earns his living at least 50% of his time on the road, in Metro Manila traffic, so I was shocked to see when I opened my driveway gates and watched in back in (I should say, attempt to back in, he never made it all the way both times he tried) that this guy couldn’t’ back his van into a normal size (2 meters wide) Philippine driveway.
He had no sense of his clearance on either side using his left and right outside mirrors, and wound up being stopped by his helper (who was trying to direct him) both times with the van crooked as a dog’s hind leg, only part way into the driveway, and inches from striking the driveway wall with a rear corner of he van.
If he just knew how to back up using his outside rear view mirrors he could have easily backed more than two van-lengths farther toward the rear of the house. Instead he and his helper had to carry the heavy restaurant-size range probably 40 feet farther than they had to.
Do you routinely drive forward into a driveway? Yes, well sometimes do I. But there are many times backing in is much smarter, and if you’re not as comfortable backing in as you are pulling in forward, then there’s a very useful skill you should practice to prepare yourself for Philippines driving.
Reasons To Back In
- When you are going to load/unload from the rear of the vehicle
- When the driveway is narrow
- When the street is narrow too, and you can’t “swing wide” in a huge “wagon turn” that so many American drivers are used to.
- When you are concerned about safety backing out into traffic. You can see and maneuver ever so much better driving forward than backing out blind
- You can back in to a space much tighter than you can drive forward into. (don’t believe me? Read on)
And in the Philippines, getting into really tight parking slots and driveways may mean the difference between parking or having to drive on somewhere else. Parking is frequently chaotic and almost always TIGHT.
Why You Can Get In Backward Where You Can’t Get In Forward ?
Here’s the main reason. An overhead view of an average car. Notice the two circles, one bigger, one much smaller (tighter). The outer circle is the path the car’s front wheels will follow with the steering wheel turned all the way. You car’s minimum turning radius shown as a “turning Circle in other words. On most smaller cars like you’ll be driving here, your “turning circle” will be about 7 or 8 meters in diameter … while something like a Ford F-150 has a turning circle over 12 meters (nearly 42 feet). But the overall size doesn’t really matter. Of course a much larger vehicle is going to need a larger space to turn.
The key to what we are talking about id the smaller, inside circle. That is the circle that your REAR wheels are going to travel on. Look at the size of the inner circle compared to the outer. The rear wheel’s turning radius is roughly half the radius of the front wheel’s.
Puling In Forward Needs More Room
So if we look at our “Pull in parker” example, in order to start his turn =from a position where the car can “”pull in forward in one “sweep”. the turn has to start at a minimum of half the turning circle’s size away from the parking slot. Often, this is way, way more space than you are going to have available. If you are going to try to drive straight in you are going to wind up having to try to keep your left front corner VERY close to the car on the left, and you are in danger of being “jammed” where the right rear side is getting too close to the obstruction on the 
night … you have to back up.
And you are in an awkward position to back up too, because when you swing your steering wheel you bring that troubles right rear away from the car on your right, well you are also bring i=the whole car more to the right, and you’re backing up semi-blind to all the other vehicle and foot traffic trying to pass in the narrow access lane they think you just vacated. I don’t know about you, but I HATE to be in that situation … it’s no fun.
Backing In Needs Less Space
Now take a look at our smart “backer-inner” driver.
S/he can start the turn from way closer to the car on the right. The right side can be kept close .. very close to the car on the right, and every foot the car is moving back gives more and more clearance for the left front corner to swing out on its wider circle.
And suppose the space is so tight that even backing in you find you are not turning quite sharp enough?
Well you can pull forward and then turn the wheel fully and make another attempt … and the front of your care never really gave up the parking lot lane/street that you are leaving, plus you can see pedestrians and such, so everyone will have no choice except to wait until you make another stab or two at the parking slot.
Plus when you leave, you won’t have to “hopefully” stick the back end of your car out into traffic, you can edge your way out pulling forward. “Bob’s Your Mother’s Brother” as they say.
Just as in many social situation here in the Philippines, “Bulling” your way forward is not always the way to go, sometimes you can get way ahead of the game by backing up.
Lol…back up… reverse.
I almost always back into a parking space, mainly because it makes exciting the space far easier. When I was living in Angeles City, a friend and I would sit at one of the cafés on the outside of SM Clark and watch people trying to back into the spaces. They were forced into this because if the way the mall arranged the lot. It was quite entertaining and we made a betting game out of it. Some did okay but the vast majority required more than two attempts.
Dave:
Our neighbour’s daughters, it has been observed, not only invented, but have mastered, the 37 point turn when backing in… Quite entertaining to watch.
Another observation… I’ve noticed that many people (pedestrians) here have a really bad habit of continuing walking behind a car they see is already backing out of a space. Backing in to begin with eliminates that blind spot.
I consider myself an excellent driver while driving at excessive speeds, in traffic, avoiding taxis, pedestrians or any other challenging situation you might find here in the Philippines, but take me under 2 mph and you might as well give me a seeing eye dog. I have a black Starex and about a month ago I was trying to back out of the driveway that has a metal entrance gate with only about 8 inches clearance on either side. All of a sudden you could here the sound of metal on the driver side scraping as I dented and scraped off about a one foot long section. Then it was time for the right side as I pulled forward I did the same exact thing. All I could do is laugh. Hyundai was sure happy to see me LOL
Dad was a truck driver and we lived on a farm. When I started driving on the road around the farm at 12the years old, Dad decided there were some skills I needed to know. Backing up using only the mirrors and no turning around to look was one. The other was driving a stick shift without killing it when shifting gears or starting from the stop sign on an uphill grade.
Good lessons to learn.
We might have had the same Dad except I grew up in NYC. Learned to drive on a ’33 Ford, obviously a stick. Dad used to make me stop at the top of a grade and hold the car steady by playing with the clutch and gas pedal. I learned a lot about using only mirrors in a garage parking job I had in high school. I still find it a lot easier to back into a parking space on my right as opposed to my left though. On my visits to PI, I have studiously eschewed driving at all. I doubt I would ever drive in Manila; maybe in a province area but I’m not sure. If I lived there, I might change but …
When you take a driver license in Denmark, back parking AND parallel parking is mandatory.
If you fail, you won’t get the license. And we don’t talk about a 37 point backing…So i guess most of us is rather good at doing that.
Maybe that’s a reason here in Philippines, a lot of the drivers here, are autodidact (sounds better), so they have never learned the right way to do it. I have also observed that really many use a lot of time to get the car parked backwards and not always with a good result, but what the heck…a lot that drive in forward do occupy to spaces anyway. I sure is more fun here…
Don’t mind driving at all here. In fact all the dents on our car is from parking in our insanely small garage lol.
Just completed my first week living in our new home in Cainta My wife Maricel is the primary driver upon backing up parking another driver pulled up behind and hit our car not looking that she was backing It has been a interesting week with driving and making the finnishing touches to our home
I always back up in our garage when parking, no scratches while parking so far. Last week our neighbor accidentally ran over her 3 year old niece while backing up in her parking space. It was so sad…. poor girl.
This is why rear view cameras should be made mandatory in all late-model cars. Presently, some late model cars have them, while others don’t. This is an option I have to have when buying a new car. Good drivers make a habit of honking their horn before backing up or backing out of a garage, and never rely on the rear and side view mirrors alone since there are blind spots all around.
Regarding holding the car steady on an incline while stopped at a traffic light, “playing” with the clutch and gas pedal is not the best way to go. That will burn up your clutch quickly, especially if you live in hilly San Francisco. Put the stick in neutral and use your emergency brakes,
Well, as I wrote, it was my Dad teaching me how to drive on a ’33 Ford. The idea, as written, was to learn the interplay between the clutch and the gas pedal. And, as written, it was in NYC not SFO which, in those days, was a cow-town.
John, playing the clutch is meant to be a training exercise for new drivers. My father did the same with me back in the Virginia hills. In practice, my preference has been to depress the clutch all the way, and place my right heel on the brake pedal with the toe on the accelerator. At the proper time, I eased off the clutch, and coordinated releasing the brake and depressing the accelerator with the feel of the clutch engaging. More simple to do than to explain. Not sure I could use a back up camera. Too many years backing rigs with the mirrors.
Roger that, Pete. The scenario that plays in my mind was of me driving to San Francisco from my hometown of Monterey as a teenager in my first ever car, a hot rod ’49 Merc with a stick shift.
I recall having to coordinate the clutch, the gas pedal, the foot brake, AND emergency brake (hand brake) when I’m stopped at a traffic light on top of a hill. There were many such hills in San Francisco. I never manipulated the clutch and the gas pedal to hold the car “steady”, meaning, to keep the car from rolling backwards. I used the emergency brake (hand brake). With the right foot on the brake pedal, I apply the emergency brake, put the stick in neutral, and release the clutch.
On green, the emergency brake acts as your right foot on the brake pedal to keep the car from rolling backward, which, at this juncture, is now on the gas pedal interplaying with the clutch to get the car moving forward.
Reversing cameras sure can be a help; but I have to keep turning around to look at it, since I cannot get into the (bad) habit of reversing a car while facing forward. And of course, they all show the message…”do not rely upon this camera image when reversing” or words to that effect.
Slipping the clutch on a 33 Ford, Well having learned to drive in Suriname at age 14…flat no turns no traffic except some bikes, those drivers are really fast runners once you hit the bike. We came home to the eastern Ohio hills in time for me to get licensed. Dad took me to a steep hill, about a 6/12 pitch made me stop then go halfway up. If I slipped the clutch had to try again. Two days later nailed it every time. Now we went down hill stopped a backed up took another day but included not looking over shoulder. Of course when the test came aced it, even upset the instructor by asking if he wanted to move the parallel parking cones closer (foreign cars being much shorter than American at that time). Even though It says safe driver on my license I would only consider myself an adequate and fortunate driver
Great Dave! I never saw it explained geometrically before. It took me a while, and I’m still not completely comfortable with the folks who tap on your fender while you back out of a space. Supposedly, you’re supposed to stop when they stop tapping. I suppose I’ll never really trust that system.
Take care,
Pete
Cowboy,
When I was there, I back up and EVERYONE in the van was looking out the windows and yelled “OOPS!”. What the heck? I slammed on the brakes. I then learned that meant I was getting close. They obviously didn’t have faith in me since I wasn’t looking out the back window, and using only my mirrors. Too funny!
I’ve never looked back since I had a stiff neck lol .
LOL!!! Loved reading your article. It’s pretty fun to watch my Mom try to back up. The driveway at my house was FOUR cars wide. She couldn’t manage it. but, she did use that space to turn her car around and then pull out of the driveway!! What a fun sight to see. I laughed every time.
There is always trying to look over your shoulder in a car, but I learned MANY years ago to use my mirrors, and have no problems backing into spots. I’m glad I’ll have the skill should I need it in the Philippines. 🙂