Reversing out of a parking spot is one of the most common maneuvers you’ll perform as a driver, and one of the riskiest. NHTSA data shows backing incidents cause roughly 14,000 injuries and over 200 fatalities per year in non-traffic areas like parking lots. Most of these are preventable with the right technique. Here’s how to back out safely, whether you’re in a perpendicular spot, an angled space, or a tight row.
Before You Move: Set Yourself Up
The work starts before your foot touches the brake pedal. Adjust your mirrors so you can see as far down each side of your vehicle as possible. Check your rearview mirror and backup camera if you have one. Then do a visual sweep: turn your head and look over both shoulders. You’re checking for pedestrians, shopping carts, children, and other cars already in motion behind you.
Put the car in reverse with your foot firmly on the brake. Keep your seatbelt on and turn off anything distracting, including loud music that might prevent you from hearing a horn or a shout.
The Blind Spots You Can’t Ignore
Every vehicle has a blind zone directly below the rear window and behind the bumper. This is the area mirrors and even backup cameras struggle to cover, and it’s exactly where small children and low obstacles tend to be. Side mirrors leave gaps as well, particularly along the rear quarter panels on both sides of the car.
Backup cameras help, but they have real limitations. Most use fisheye lenses that create barrel distortion, making objects appear farther away than they actually are. Vehicle vibrations from uneven pavement also shift the camera’s perspective, causing the apparent distance to obstacles to fluctuate from frame to frame. In backlighting or blurry conditions, the camera’s ability to detect lane markings and edges drops noticeably. Treat the camera as one tool among several, not a substitute for turning your head.
Step-by-Step: Perpendicular Spots
Perpendicular spots (the standard 90-degree spaces in most parking lots) require the most steering input to exit. Here’s the sequence:
- Creep straight back first. Release the brake gently and let the car roll backward at idle speed, no gas pedal needed. Keep the steering wheel straight for the first meter or so. This pulls your front bumper back enough to start clearing the vehicles on either side of you.
- Pick your turning point. Watch your side mirror on the open side (the direction you want your front end to swing toward). When that mirror lines up with the rear bumper of the car next to you, begin turning the wheel. This is your cue that your rear end has cleared enough space to start the arc without clipping the adjacent vehicle.
- Turn slowly and check both sides. As you steer, your front end swings in the opposite direction. This is the moment most fender-benders happen. If you’re turning the wheel to the right, your left front corner swings outward toward the car on your left. Glance at that corner repeatedly.
- Straighten and stop. Once your vehicle is roughly aligned with the driving lane, straighten the wheel, brake to a full stop, shift into drive, and proceed forward.
Step-by-Step: Angled Spots
Angled parking spaces (typically 45 to 60 degrees) are designed so you pull in forward, which means reversing out puts you at an awkward angle to traffic. The good news is you need less steering input than a perpendicular spot. The bad news is your visibility toward oncoming traffic is worse because you’re pointed away from the flow of cars.
Back out slowly in a straight line first, just as with a perpendicular spot. Because the angle already aims your rear end partially into the lane, you’ll enter the driving aisle sooner. Begin your steering correction earlier and more gently. A common mistake is cranking the wheel hard, which overshoots the lane and puts you diagonal to traffic. Feather the wheel gradually and check your mirrors for cars approaching from the direction your trunk is pointing, since that’s the side you can see least.
Speed and Steering Control
The single most important rule: go slowly. In a parking lot, idle creep speed (the pace the car moves with your foot off both pedals in an automatic) is fast enough for most of the maneuver. Hovering your foot over the brake, not the gas, gives you instant stopping power if a pedestrian appears.
Steer with smooth, deliberate inputs. Jerky wheel movements at low speed cause the car to lurch unpredictably, and they make it harder to judge your clearance on both sides. If you feel rushed because another driver is waiting, resist the urge to speed up. A slow, controlled exit takes about 10 seconds. A collision takes much longer to resolve.
Who Has the Right of Way
If you’re backing out of a space, you almost never have the right of way. Traffic laws in most states treat exiting a parking stall the same as pulling out of a driveway: you must yield to all moving traffic in the lane and to any pedestrians on the sidewalk or crosswalk. From an insurance standpoint, the driver who is reversing is typically assigned the majority of fault in a collision, because they’re expected to verify the path is clear before moving.
This means you should wait if you see a car approaching in the lane behind you, even if you started backing out first. It also means making eye contact with pedestrians before committing to the maneuver. A quick tap of the horn in a busy lot can alert people to your movement, though it’s no substitute for actually looking.
Tight Spaces and Limited Visibility
When large vehicles like SUVs or trucks are parked on both sides of you, your sightlines shrink dramatically. You may not be able to see approaching traffic at all until your rear bumper is already in the lane. In this situation, back out even more slowly than usual. The gradual appearance of your vehicle’s tail gives other drivers time to react and stop.
If you have a passenger, ask them to step out and spot for you. They can stand at the rear of the vehicle and signal when the lane is clear. This is especially useful in crowded lots during holidays or events where foot traffic is heavy and parking rows are narrow.
Another practical option: avoid the problem entirely by pulling through to the opposite space when you park. Driving forward out of a spot gives you far better visibility and eliminates the blind-zone risk behind the vehicle. Many safety organizations recommend pull-through or back-in parking for exactly this reason.
Common Mistakes That Cause Collisions
Turning the wheel too early is the most frequent error. If you start your arc before your rear end clears the neighboring vehicles, your front bumper swings into one of them. Be patient with that initial straight-line reverse.
Relying solely on the backup camera is another common mistake. The camera’s wide-angle lens compresses distance, so a car that looks two car-lengths away may only be one. And the camera shows you what’s directly behind the vehicle, not what’s approaching from the sides.
Backing out while distracted, even briefly glancing at a phone notification, removes your awareness during the most hazard-dense 10 seconds of driving. Parking lots are full of unpredictable movement: children darting between cars, drivers suddenly pulling out from adjacent spots, shopping carts rolling freely. Your eyes need to be scanning continuously until you’re fully in the lane and moving forward.