Parking and stopping

Stopping, standing and parking are three different things

Signs use these words precisely, and the test does too. No stopping means do not halt the vehicle there at all, even for a moment, except when traffic or a police officer forces you to. No standing means you may pause only long enough to let a passenger get in or out, and you stay with the vehicle. No parking is the mildest of the three: you may stop briefly to load or unload people or goods, but you may not leave the vehicle sitting there.

The reason the wording matters is that a no stopping sign usually marks a place where a halted vehicle is genuinely dangerous, such as a spot that hides a crossing or narrows a lane on a bend, while a no parking sign marks a place that simply needs to stay clear. Read the sign, read the arrows on it, and read the times printed under it, because many restrictions apply only during certain hours or certain months.

Places you may not leave a vehicle

The list is close to identical across the country, even though the measured distances behind it are provincial. Do not stop or park where you would block a fire hydrant, a crosswalk, a sidewalk, a driveway, an intersection, a bus stop or a bike lane. Keep clear of railway crossings, bridges, tunnels and the space beside another parked vehicle, since double parking pushes a whole lane of traffic around you. Do not park where a sign or a painted curb forbids it, and never in a space marked for accessible parking unless the vehicle displays the permit that space is for.

Two more that catch people out: do not park facing against the direction of traffic on a two way road, and do not park on the travelled part of a highway if there is any way to get off it. If you must stop on a rural road, get as far onto the shoulder as you safely can, leave the road visible from both directions, and turn on your hazard lights.

The exact distances you must keep from a hydrant, a corner or a crossing are set by each province and sometimes by the city, and they are the kind of number that changes. Learn the ones printed in the guide for your own province, and treat the sign or the painted curb in front of you as the authority on that particular spot.

Parallel parking, one step at a time

Parallel parking is a sequence, and it works every time if you do it in order rather than by feel. Find a space noticeably longer than your vehicle. Signal, check your mirrors and your blind spot, and stop beside the vehicle in front of the space, roughly level with it and about an arm span out from it. Put the car in reverse and check over both shoulders and through the back window, because everything that happens next happens behind you.

Reverse slowly and turn the wheel toward the curb so the back of your car swings into the space. When your vehicle sits at an angle across the opening and you can see the headlights of the car behind through your rear window, straighten the wheel and keep reversing until your front bumper clears the vehicle in front. Then turn the wheel the other way to bring the front of the car in, and stop before you touch the vehicle behind.

Finish by centring yourself in the space, close and parallel to the curb, then set the parking brake and put the vehicle in park or in gear. If it did not come out right, that is normal. Pull forward, adjust, and try again. Examiners expect adjustment; what they do not want to see is a driver who reverses without looking behind or who touches another vehicle or the curb hard.

Hills, and leaving the vehicle safely

A parked car should not be able to roll into traffic, and the front wheels are what stop it. Facing downhill, turn the front wheels toward the curb, so that if the car creeps it rolls into the curb and stops. Facing uphill with a curb, turn the wheels away from the curb and let the car roll back until a wheel rests against it. Where there is no curb at all, turn the wheels toward the edge of the road in either direction, so that any movement takes the car away from the traffic lane.

Always set the parking brake, and leave an automatic in park or a manual in gear. Turn the engine off, take the key, and lock up. Never leave a child or an animal alone in a parked vehicle: an interior heats up dangerously fast in the sun, and the risk in a Canadian winter runs the other way.

Getting out is the last hazard and the one drivers forget. Check your mirror, then look over your shoulder for a cyclist before you open the door, and open it only as far as you need. Opening the door with the hand furthest from it turns your body toward the traffic naturally and makes that look automatic. Passengers, especially children, get out on the curb side.

Where you park and what happens next

Angle parking, common in lots and on some main streets, is easy to enter and awkward to leave, because you back out with your view blocked by the vehicles beside you. Reverse very slowly, edge back until you can see past them, and expect somebody to be moving behind you. Backing into the space instead, where it is allowed, turns the difficult part into the easy part.

Winter parking has rules of its own in many municipalities: overnight bans while ploughs work, alternating sides on certain dates, and towing when snow clearing starts. These are local, they change from one city to the next, and the fine and the towing are both real. Check the local rules wherever you leave a car overnight in winter.