I will never be able to decipher this even if I sit over it for the next 15 years.
What does the following mean?
What does it mean to “turn the wheels towards the side of the road on which you are parked”? If you are already parked there, how can you turn the wheels in the direction where you are already standing?
Clarissa's Blog 
You can turn the wheels somewhat even when the car is parked. It is better to turn the wheels as the car is moving, when you are close to being in your final parked position. Also, do you have a lot of hills you are going to park on? This is something people in San Fran pay attention to – people in Atlanta not so much.
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We don’t have any hills but I need to know this stuff to pass the written exam.
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So you do have a written exam. Oh no… I studied for hours and almost failed it. I am the only human being who almost managed to fail that test. You are smarter than I am, but study hard!
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The wheels turn, to a limited extent, independent of the body of the car. If you turn the steering wheel while the car is stationary, the wheels will rotate to the left or right. So, if in the street without curbing example, the outer edge of the road where you are parked is to your left while sitting in the car, you would turn your wheel to the left.
Why is another question. The bit about the hills, uphill and downhill is in the UK driving test, but the bit about curbless parking is not.
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Clarissa is in the U.S., not the UK. The edge of the road usually will be to the right for her.
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Gosh, thank you for explaining that Clarissa is in the US, I never would have guessed. When I lived there I somehow failed to notice that people only ever parked on the one side of the road.
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You’re welcome. I wasn’t trying to point it out to you, I was pointing it out to Clarissa. Since she has confessed confusion, I thought it would be helpful to remind her why this is backwards.
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Which would be very helpful if it actually was backwards. Hence the sarcasm, which you seem to have missed.
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I had trouble with this, because I’m right/left impaired. So instead, I imagined it as a picture. The goal is to keep your car from rolling out of control into the street if the parking break fails. So ideally, you’d like it to roll into the curb, because the curb will stop it. If you’re uphill, you’d want to face your wheels away from the curb, because then if you roll (backwards) the car rolls into the curb. If you’re uphill and there is NO curb, turn your wheels the other way (towards the curb) because then your car will roll off the street (backwards). If you’re downhill, with or without a curb, the car wants to roll off the street, so you face your wheels towards the side of the street/curb (away from the street), so that if the car starts to roll (forward), it rolls either into the curb or off the street, depending. That’s how I understood it for my drivers exam. Good luck 🙂
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Exactly! If your parking brake fails and your empty car begins rolling, you want to make sure it rolls into the curb, not out of control hitting someone or something.
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If you are parked on the right side of the road, facing downhill, just before you stop, turn the steering wheel to the right so the front wheels turn in to the curb/kerb.
If you are parked on the left side facing downhill, turn the wheels to the left.
If you are facing uphill on the right, turn your steering wheel to the left.
If you are facing uphill on the left, turn your steering wheel to the right.
In each case, if the parking brake fails and the car begins to roll downhill, the front wheels should strike the curb/kerb and stop it rolling.
If there is no kerb/curb, this won’t work so well, especially if your car is facing uphill.
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