Dear LPG

I am one of the pensioners in Lewisham who, in my very late 80s, still drives around under their own speed.  I have been driving since 1975 and I have to say that I presented quite a challenge for the driving instructor who took me on.  Back then I remember how scared I was every time I took my seat behind the wheel of a car, and the most frightening aspect of the whole thing for me was parking.

In the mid-1970s I would find myself parking on what I perceived to be the busy roads of Lewisham where there would be at least half a dozen cars parked in the road where I lived.   I passed the test on the second attempt, including parallel parking, and was assured that I failed the first test because of my lack of confidence, but like most drivers, that grew as I went solo.

I soon got a bit lazy and adopted an easy way to park, but as the years went by and the numbers of cars grew, I found it harder and harder to find gaps between parked cars which would allow me the ‘at least three car lengths’ I thought I needed to drive up to the space forwards and imitate a horizontal version of an aeroplane touch-down when it came to positioning the near side of my car with the optimum gap between it and the curb. 

When I first passed my test I often used to cast my mind back to the late 1950s, and, as a rookie car driver, I so often wished that there were fewer cars on the roads.  I remember the day in 1964 when my husband bought our first ever car and parked it outside our house increasing the number of the streets cars owners to seven as far as the eye could see. 

But when I take to the road these days there are more cars than spaces and without knowing it I have learned the art of parallel parking with confidence, and without even realising.  I find it interesting how as there became less gaps I managed to park more confidently, and lately I hear that the amount of cars on the road appears to have peaked, or is at least growing at a much slower rate.

I found some statistics that might be of interest.

LR, Lewisham

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