parallel parking a prius

You're kidding me right?

 

The rear bumper cover on the Prius is like paper thin, seems like just looking at it, it dents.

There's a guy with a corvette in my neighborhood who has a bumper buddy on his car. Funny thing is, he puts it on even when in his own driveway. Maybe his wife or kid are careles parkers.

 

I never really thought about it before, but since Driver Ed courses were one of the first cost savings measures to be cut, that makes sense. Let the new drivers just learn at all of our expense. Scary but true.

 

Phew, rather you than me.

Insurance and accident rates for under 25's here are horrific and that's after significant training. Imagine what's they'd be like if you just do a few laps around the local supermarket carpark before heading off with 4 of your mates in.

Utter madness.

Is insurance compulsory for you too?

Car insurance for young drivers | AA

 

Yes it's compulsory. The rates for those under 25 are ridiculous but for good reason I guess. Drivers Ed requirements differ by state. Some require it and others don't. As usual, we're not at all consistent in our thinking.

 

Not that it brings back the dead or soothes the maimed, with that signature you have the parents dead to rights when the inevitable occurs.

 

Well, Prius III has a nice sharp turning radius but the worst outward visibility of any vehicle I've ever owned. It also has body panels so low that they can strike a high curb. So just be very careful while you're practicing.

 

2 ways to parallel park easy ....
#1 - buy the advanced package prius - it'll park itself (expensive)

#2 - cheep way - curb feelers
.

 

How I wish I were! But no I am serious for once. This is a quote from the official Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles website:

If you are under 18 years of age, your parent, guardian, or foster parent must provide his or her driver's license or state-issued identification card number and sign the driver education completion certificate. By signing the certificate, they attest to your academic standing and certify that you have driven at least 45 hours (15 of which occurred after sunset) and that the statements made and the information submitted on the certificate are true and correct. Certifying false statements can result in prosecution.

(So after driving 45 hours with Ma or Pa and you are good to take the rather trivial driving exam and hit the roads here in Virginia!)

 

Sorry to burst this bubble also, but here in Virginia you do NOT have to purchase insurance for your automobile ! You have to either attest that it is insured OR simply pay Virginia a "drive without insurance" fee of $500 per year. To quote from the official Virginia DMV web site:


The Virginia Uninsured Motor Vehicle (UMV) fee allows a motor vehicle owner to register an uninsured motor vehicle. At the time of registration, the motor vehicle owner must certify whether the vehicle is insured or uninsured.
If the vehicle is uninsured, the motor vehicle owner is required to pay to DMV a $500 uninsured motor vehicle fee in addition to normal registration fees. Payment of the $500 fee does not provide the motorist with any insurance coverage. If involved in an accident, the uninsured motorist remains personally liable. This fee is valid for twelve months but may be prorated for a shorter amount of time.


(Please consider that paying the $500 fee would typically cost much less than insurance would cost for high-risk drivers, so you have to assume that some of the most dangerous drivers on the road are, in fact, uninsured. Therefore, we have to purchase an extra insurance coverage for collisions with "uninsured motorists" on our car insurance each year, and I would assume that almost all of the sane, rational drivers in Virginia are doing the same.)

Um, one take-home message for you foreign folks renting cars in the USA is to make sure that "uninsured motorist" coverage is included. It is probably hard for some foreigners to really understand how different things can be in the USA, although as a previous post noted all the states can be quite different.

 

robert,

lets not even think about all the untagged scooters running around, which are uninsured most likely being driven around by folks making next to nothing. So if you get hit by them, you still end up paying, and you won't be able recover anything since they probably don't have any assets to attack.

 

lol funny you should say that. I have a friend who can never return to the US having been caught out on something very similar.

1, Here you have minimum legal liability cover for injury to your passengers and other persons and their property with a minimum amount of £20,000,000 (less on some commercial policies). Actually there's a lower cover but barely any insurers offer it as it has a limit of £1,000,000. Most policies include this automatically as it is required to cover you in all EU countries.

2, Then you have fire and theft cover on top of that.

3, And then full cover (comprehensive) which covers your car minus a deductible which is usually £200/£250, though mine's £100 and some are higher for higher risk cars and/or drivers. This will cover damage to your car by any cause, including uninsured drivers - though such claims may affect your rates. You can claim for injury from an uninsured driver through a central 'fund' from all insurers - a throw back to the 1930's, but handy to still have.

Though in reality most people go for the full cover as it barely costs much more.

But yeah, the insurance covers with your hire companies are a nightmare for those who don't know what to look out for. My friend got caught out when he was told the liability coverage was the State minimum. He assumed it would be over $1million or more like ours, but in Florida it turned out to be $10,000 or something.

Though even as insurance is a legal requirement here and it is actively policed, 1 in 20 cars is uninsured, probably because the fine is less than the average premium. A scumbag with a £200 car doesn't care and doesn't have a house or assets to recover so doesn't bother with insurance.

Vehicle insurance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
'How many uninsured drivers are on the road?' - Telegraph

 

Ok, you made me curious so I googled Uninsured Motorist rates in the USA. So here are the results for 2013 from a statistical website:

Percent of car accidents caused by uninsured motorists 14 %
Percent of drivers who are uninsured 16.1 %

Bottom line is that you in the UK have a 1/20 rate of UM which is about 5%, and the USA has three times that rate of Uninsured Motorists!

Slightly shocked at how high our rate is, but silver lining is that the UM drivers actually have a lower percentage of accident involvement than one would expect fom their percent of the driver population. Sigh.

 

Ah...poverty.
The great equalizer.

The roads and traffic here are much different than they are on the Continent, which is why you have drivers who cannot drive and why they let kids behind the wheel.
The young and uneducated simply do not kill and main enough people to reach a critical mass of outrage in this country and we're rather more spread out here and lack your public transport.

We ARE successfully exporting sloth and ignorance though since there are 5-pax sedans with many windows and mirrors that still have optional "self-park" features.
One of the things that I used to do in my former NAVY unit was to instruct people on driving a HMMWV based vehicle that lacked a rear-view mirror...because it also lacked a rear window.


One of my "pass-fail" tests was parallel parking.


Priuses are ridiculously hard to see out of for a car with as much glass as they have, and the mirrors SUCK!!!!!
With a little practice and maybe a spare wheel cover or two however, it's not that hard to learn to parallel park one.
You have to want it.

 

I really like the Nissan Leaf camera system as it has several cameras and you can get a full 360 degree view all around the car. Once you get used to is, it's really quite nice.

 

the prius, I am just guessing as to where the front end really is..., my hhr was much better, especialy with the flares fron fenders. had more than a few bumper scrapes that I did not realize until i washed the car wondering. Where did that come from???
heck I've got the tennis ball hanging in the garage so I don't run into the snow blower...

 

You're not the only one. I could parallel park my previous car with my eyes closed (I wish...). I've gotten pretty okay parallel parking my Prius. What's especially fun is parallel parking on the left-hand side on a one-way street. In front of a busy restaurant...while feeling the glare of everyone watching lol.