Plenty vehicles on the road with no rear visibility except via wing mirrors and most of those manage to be driven and manoeuvred safely.

Ever driven a van?

If you haven’t, you’ll be unaware that to avoid say, pulling out in front of a cyclist at an angled T junction, you may need to not only lean forward but also articulate your neck.

That’s even with massive mirrors, that you don’t get with a car.

I see so much shit driving caused by being unable to observe sufficiently due to mobility problems. Bus passes exist for good reason.

Ok, so having come back to this this morning, we have progressed into some arguments about ‘stuff’ but seem to have agreed that yes everything is ok as the driver is still in control of the vehicle (if they have their hands off the steering wheel). I’ve been in one of the first VW attempts at this and it was very impressive – parallel parked with ease. My parents were at an offroad driving experience in one of the new top-end Range Rover things and that was even more impressive – the speed the wheel was being spun to get in the space was incredibly fast – faster than I think a human could achieve.

I think it is a great idea – but I’m utterly bobbins at parking – I can do it, but it isn’t smooth and generally not first time – lack of practice, I suspect! So I’d be quite happy with a car that did this…

I don’t have automatic park but I have reverse sensors and it makes things a little bit easier for parking they’re a great assist.

You stay class there Sbob.

My 2006 Prius has self parking.  But you have to control the brake and watch the screen – it doesn’t respond to people stepping out behind you etc.  It’d be ok if it let you go quickly enough – if you go over a snail’s pace it complains and then quits, which is a PITA when you are stopping traffic on a busy street.  However it is brilliant at packing into a tiny space perfectly.

Before too many people say its unnecessary my wife has a severe  neck injury which makes turing her head more than 90 degrees impossible and combine that with some poor rear viz / small window / large pillar car designs  and you have the “need”

Cameras fix that, no need for autonomous parking.

All very well squeezing into a tiny spot, but what about the poor old dear parked behind you who can then no longer get out?

You stay class there Sbob.

You stay putting people off the forum Drac. 😉

Of course they’re legal, they wouldn’t be for sale if they weren’t.

My new car has self parking for parallel and perpendicular parking and gets you out of parallel spaces to.  It was park of the spec, its not something I would have taken as an option but it’s bloody impressive. You’re obviously still in control of the car, all it does is steer but you can take control at any time by grabbing the steering wheel.

Ultimately, its the driver that is deemed in control of the speed and direction of the car. Trying to blame the auto-park system of an error wouldn’t cut it. I reckon that argument would be over-ruled with the notion that as the driver you should be monitoring what its doing and intervene … and that you’d not been paying proper attention.

They do seem to be very clever systems, and sometimes they park into a space un-nervingly fast, but as already said, you can probably manually squeeze into tighter spaces yourself.

You don’t need a self-parking car if you can’t turn your head (or shoulders, neck and head combined, which I think is normal) – you just need a reversing camera.