Fun fact: I knew someone n high school who was struggling to learn to parallel park, they called me on the phone, I explained it to them over the phone, and they passed their driving test later that day.
So yes, I think it can be taught better. I am not particularly great at it myself, and I no longer remember exactly how I was taught or what I said in that conversation. It was definitely more mathematically precise than the standard description- specific angles and alignments and the like- so not suitable for everyone’s style of thinking. And those angles don’t work for vehicles with terrible turning radii, like some pickups.
The standard advice people give for backing up a trailer is mostly also ridiculously bad. Relatedly, most people are bad enough at it that there are shirts about the fights it causes for couples at campgrounds. The actual process, though, is not actually hard, and there are simple descriptions and ways of communicating that accurately capture the process. My wife and I had to work those out for ourselves after watching dozens of tutorials, taking a two day driving course, and having deliberate regrouping discussions after the first few dozen attempts. This is more recent for me than learning to parallel park, so I remember it better. In this case, I think the problem is that people learning want there to be some secret that makes it easy, instead of trying to actually understand what’s physically happening throughout the process. Mostly the people teaching also don’t really understand why things work the way they do, and rely on repeating the magic recipe they learned.
Fun fact: I knew someone n high school who was struggling to learn to parallel park, they called me on the phone, I explained it to them over the phone, and they passed their driving test later that day.
So yes, I think it can be taught better. I am not particularly great at it myself, and I no longer remember exactly how I was taught or what I said in that conversation. It was definitely more mathematically precise than the standard description- specific angles and alignments and the like- so not suitable for everyone’s style of thinking. And those angles don’t work for vehicles with terrible turning radii, like some pickups.
The standard advice people give for backing up a trailer is mostly also ridiculously bad. Relatedly, most people are bad enough at it that there are shirts about the fights it causes for couples at campgrounds. The actual process, though, is not actually hard, and there are simple descriptions and ways of communicating that accurately capture the process. My wife and I had to work those out for ourselves after watching dozens of tutorials, taking a two day driving course, and having deliberate regrouping discussions after the first few dozen attempts. This is more recent for me than learning to parallel park, so I remember it better. In this case, I think the problem is that people learning want there to be some secret that makes it easy, instead of trying to actually understand what’s physically happening throughout the process. Mostly the people teaching also don’t really understand why things work the way they do, and rely on repeating the magic recipe they learned.