Parking

YouTube channel MinutePhysics takes a look at why it's more difficult to back a car up than it is to drive it forward.

Movies often need audience help in the form of suspension of disbelief, wherein you agree to ignore some of the wilder aspects of a plot or yet another outrageous coincidence. But movies are fiction, whereas this video of a driver trying to maneuver out of a parking spot in Calgary, Alberta, Canada is true. In fact, this video required us to embrace disbelief, constantly asking ourselves, "Is this really happening?"

There are few things more frustrating in life than watching your car being towed away and not being able to do anything about it. However, this guy reportedly in Walthamstow, East London, apparently wasn't going to let that happen to him.

The city of Detroit is desperate for two things – revenue and savings. It needs to start making more money, and it needs to curb spending. What happens, though, when those two objectives run counter to each other? Well, you get a story like this one, where cost-saving measures are actually costing the city far more in lost revenue.

We've all been there. You walk down the street and can't believe how people have parked like that. Maybe they're taking up two spots. Maybe they're sticking out and blocking part of the street, sidewalk or crosswalk. And maybe you think about leaving a note, but you probably don't. One vandal in New York, however, is taking things a step beyond.

A vandal in the New York borough of Queens bypassed the fad of leaving passive-aggressive notes on bad drivers' windshields for the more active, aggressive strategy of spray-painting cars with their rude messages.

The absolute worst part of going to any big sporting event or concert isn't the high price of tickets or the expensive beer; it's trying to use the bathroom, especially a stall. Public toilets during events are always packed, smelly, and full of inexplicable puddles. It's the worst. But a new Los Angeles startup called Tooshlights is taking inspiration from parking garages to make restrooms a better experience.

The parking situation in Madrid, Spain went through two big changes this week. In some areas, the meters have been updated to know what kind of vehicle is parked there and charge dirty vehicles more money while giving discounts to cleaner ones. In another area, all parking meters have been removed. We'll call it mixed messaging.

Plane to catch and don't feel like hunting for parking? Travelers at Duesseldorf airport in Germany can soon leave the job to a robot valet.

BMW is putting a new spin on the concept of the San Francisco treat. The German automaker cut a deal to clear out 80 street-parking spaces for its DriveNow car-sharing program in the notoriously parking-constrained City by the Bay. Bimmer is also more than doubling its all-electric ActiveE car-sharing fleet in San Francisco to 150 vehicles from 70.

It always seems that parking is easy to find when you don't need it, and it turns out that there might be a reason for that. New studies conducted by the University of Connecticut have found that the US might actually have too many spaces, especially in cities where they are needed least.

Cities around the world have taken major steps to reduce congestion. We've talked at length about London's use of congestion charging, while the German city of Hamburg is working to ban cars outright. Now, admittedly, neither of these solutions would work in the US, because 'Murica. That doesn't mean there wo

It's difficult to express how cramped the city of London really is. It's not like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, which had the benefit of being built after the advent of the grid system - we suppose that's the downside of being founded by the Romans.

At least it's not in any way difficult to find a parking spot in Manhattan. If it was, New York City's new plan to make at least 20 percent of the off-street parking throughout the five boroughs accessible to a plug-in vehicle charging station would be really onerous. Oh, wait.

To combat parking phobia and unintentional rear-endings, Mercedes-Benz has a solution. Take the driver out of the equation.

Last week, a Michigan man found this anonymous note on his car accusing him of abusing a handicap parking spot.

A driver spends four minutes trying to figure out how to leave a parking lot.

We've all been there before: walking up to the car in a parking lot ready to open the door, when out of nowhere a cute, rascally ankle-biting dog hops up to the window in an adjacent vehicle and starts barking.

Researchers from MIT and Berkeley have conducted a rather interesting study on the correlation between posture and behavior. While this normally wouldn't be of much interest, the study analyzed more specifically how a car's seating position can affect the driver's behavior, which we find to be a rather interesting hypothesis.

If you're lucky enough to have a nice vehicle, do your fellow gearheads a favor and don't park like a clown. Seriously. Not only will you anger everyone who is trying to find a place to park, but your nice car is a billboard reinforcing the stereotype that car people are self-important and inconsiderate.