December 18, 2003 - Curb Your Car

They don’t make you do parallel parking for the driving test ... and we all know people who couldn’t pass.   Good parkers can whip into a small space and leave their tires straight and close to the curb.  Bad parkers try multiple times for the same spot, drive on the curb, almost hit adjoining cars, and end up so far from the curb that a foot bridge is needed to get to the sidewalk. So just how good are the parkers in Santa Barbara? The dedicated staff of edhat went to find out.

Armed with nothing more than an ordinary Home Depot tape measure, the dedicated staff walked the city sidewalks

parking job of the week

measuring how much space existed between rubber and curb. Because we couldn’t figure out which was more important, we measured both the front tire and the rear. San Roque, upper East Side, and  Cottage Hospital areas were checked.  We had hoped to get readings on all types (and values) of cars, but we quickly found out that people don’t park Hummers and new Mercedes on the street.  They are safe and sound inside heated garages like coddled children.

The average front wheel was 9 inches from the curb.  The average rear wheel was 8.3 inches. Such a discrepancy is easily explained by the fact that most people “back-into” spaces - the rear leads and the front follows.  The furthest distance from the curb was a Chevy Prism on Rolling Brook Lane that was off 32 inches in the front and 27 inches in the rear.  The closest to the curb is the Ford Explorer shown here on Santa Barbara Street.

A careful analysis of our data revealed the following:

1. The height of the curb is a big factor in how close people get to it.  On average, tires were within 2 inches of low curbs, 8.5” of medium curbs, and 11.3” of tall curbs (the highest curb we found was 12” on upper Anacapa).
2. Despite what people may say about SUV drivers, they were the ones who got closest to the curb (7.1”). Pickup drivers were the ones who were the furthest away (10.5”)
3. 1 in 5 drivers managed to get both tires the same distance from the sidewalk.  The average discrepancy between tires was 2.1”
4. 6% of the vehicles we looked at were in violation of California Vehicle Code 22502 which only allows for an 18 inch margin of error.  With 1000’s of cars parked on the side of the road, maybe enforcing this law could provide an “alternate car tax.” ;-)

The winner of the edhat daily contest was none other than Tommy Noodleman whose guess of 9 inches in the front and 8 inches in the back was almost perfect.  Tommy can park our car anytime!

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