Reversing into a marked bay at 90 degrees — usually set in the test centre car park itself, which means it is often the first or last thing you do on test day. Practise it here in a right-hand-drive car with live coaching on where to start the turn and what the mirrors should be showing you.
Because the test centre car park is right there.
The scene mirrors for UK roads, so the bay corner appears in the mirror on the side you will actually be looking at.
The bay corner sinks down the mirror and drops out of frame partway through the turn — a real mirror does exactly the same. The simulator does not cheat that, and the coaching tells you what to switch to instead.
Bay lines light up the moment the car touches them, so you can see whether you would have finished inside them.
Overhead to understand the arc, driving view to learn what it looks like from the seat, chase view to watch the whole thing back.
Three steps from cold start to parked.
Drive down the aisle keeping a steady distance from the bay line, and stop where the coaching marks it.
Stop, select reverse, go to full lock, and back round at a crawl while the prompts tell you what to watch.
Straighten up as the car comes parallel with the bay lines, then reverse in until all four wheels are inside.
Almost every bad bay park is a bad approach, not bad steering.
Where you stop in the aisle decides everything that follows. Too close to the bays and you cannot get round without clipping the line; too far and you finish short of the bay entirely. The simulator marks the stopping point for you while you are learning, and then takes the marker away once you can find it yourself.
Learners often think their mirror is set wrong when the bay corner slides down the glass and vanishes partway through the turn. It is not — that is what a real door mirror does once the car has swung round far enough, because the corner ends up on the ground beside your rear wheel, below the mirror’s field of view. Push the mirror down before you start if you want to hold it longer, and from that point judge by the bay line running alongside you instead.
The car comes parallel a moment before it feels like it has. If you wait until it obviously looks straight, you have already gone past and you will finish at an angle. Take the lock off as it approaches parallel, not once it gets there.
Observation throughout — not one look at the start — control at walking pace, and finishing with all four wheels inside the bay. A correction to straighten up is allowed. Reversing without looking is not.
More on fault marking: 7 parking faults that fail the UK driving test.
Usually in the test centre car park, since that is where the marked bays are. Forward bay parking, by contrast, is normally set at a car park somewhere along the drive.
Yes — all four wheels inside the bay, reasonably central. Straddling a line attracts a fault, and how serious it is depends on how far out you are and whether you would have blocked the next bay.
Either. The examiner will not usually specify, so pick the side that gives you the better view over your shoulder and the better mirror on the bay you are aiming for. In the simulator you can practise the mirrored version by switching which side of the road you drive on.
Yes — this page defaults to left-hand traffic and a right-hand-drive car, and every coaching prompt swaps sides to match.