You’d think that if she can turn into the driveway she’d figure backing out is just that in reverse, but such was not the case.
Kansas City, Kansas (Not Missouri) resident and Redditor /u/MaxAdolphus shared home security camera footage to the /r/IdiotsInCars subreddit showing a friend of his neighbor’s daughter across the street, after pulling into their driveway get stuck trying to back out, supposedly blocked by a car legally parked across the street.
Check out the security camera footage for yourself below.
“The girl was a friend of my neighbor’s daughter,” MaxAdolphus explains.
As you can see in the video, pulling into her friend’s driveway was no problem. The issue arises when she has to back out.
Presumably, she’s used to backing straight out of her own driveway across both directions of travel on a normal, residential two-way street.
And it’s not like this street is particularly narrow.
“This is a suburban street that’s wide enough for almost 4 cars mirror to mirror (edit: it’s 26ft/7.9m wide).”
We see the teen leave her car, approach OP’s house to convince OP’s next-door-neighbor to get whoever owns the White Nissan Altima parked directly behind her to move.
“I can’t really pull out of the driveway because of how that car is illegally parked,” we can hear the teen say through the security camera mic to OP’s neighbor watching this all play out. “I was about to call 911 to get them a ticket.”
“It was my in-laws car, “OP explains. “They were just there for the evening. They didn’t park on my wife’s side because she had to get the kids from school, and didn’t park on my side because I was coming home from work.”
The teen’s friend’s Mom (aka OP’s across-the-street neighbor where this teen’s car is “stranded” at) eventually comes out and resolves the situation.
“She did go to the door and talked to my wife. The girl was a friend of my neighbor’s daughter. My wife was telling her to just turn the steering wheel, but before an argument could start, my neighbor who’s house she was at came out and was like, “Honey, no, come back over here. It’s ok.” And coached her out of the driveway.”
This is clearly a failure of this teen’s parents and Kansas’s driver’s licensing process.
According to Edgar Synder and Associates, in Kansas you can get your learners permit and start driving when you’re as young as 14 and can technically driver by yourself a year later.
If she remembered what she learned reading the Kansas DMV handbook, she’d learn to back “into the nearest lane” backing out of a residential driveway, and that means you have to turn your steering wheel to do it.
Thankfully an adult realized this was ultimately a teachable moment, a moment, hopefully, that teen will never forget.
Technically that white nissan IS illegally parked as it must be a minimum of 4ft from each driveway. The car needs to pull forward.