| By Anthony Radford
The right angle?
WITH the controversy surrounding the council’s new 90-degree car parks around the CBD continuing to grow, we decided to check it out for ourselves.
First things first. I took my car – a gas guzzling medium-sized four-wheel drive.
While it could be argued a smaller car, perhaps a Falcon or Commodore would have been more appropriate and made it easier to get in to the parks, it could also be argued a Toorak Tractor could have made it easier to get out of them.
It could also be argued that it is representative of a typical family car in present-day Bendigo.
I headed off to the next spot, outside Excelior in McLaren Street.
I took the first space on my side of the road I could see and tried to get in without going across onto the other side of the road. I couldn’t.
Instead, I ended up with about half my car behind the sedan on my right.
So, I did it again, wanting to get it in one go. To do that safely I had to swerve out onto the other side of the road, across more than half of the right-hand lane.
Almost immediately, two smaller cars parked near me.
They both swung wildly across to the other lane to get in, one forcing an oncoming car to slow down.
It was time to test my reversing. As it turned out, I had parked next to a much larger car, a Landcruiser, so my visibility was poor. It was comparable to a smaller car parking next to me and trying to reverse out. By the time I could see any oncoming traffic, more than half of the car was sticking out and a green Saab was waiting for me.
By that stage I was almost touching the cars parked on the other side of the road. As a re-test, photographer Andrew Perryman drove in and out with his small car, a Honda Jazz.
He, too, was forced to go onto the other side of the road to park, and had to wait until half his car had reversed into the traffic before seeing on-coming cars.
Although I can’t say I had concerns for my safety, I was very tentative at times, questioning my decision making.
When that and cars are put together, it isn’t a good mix.
I can see why locals are worried.
Cars are dangerous at the best of times and when you mix them with a lack of visibility, movement across lanes, regular traffic and unsure decision making, safety is easily put at risk.
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