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What is it about supermarket car parks? To paraphrase a well-known saying, 'The human brain is a wonderful thing; it starts working the moment you wake up and continues to work perfectly until you enter a supermarket car park.'
They must be some of the most hazardous places for drivers: research has shown that most minor shunts occur in supermarket car parks. They often have Give Way signs and double white lines, one-way streets, and sometimes also zebra crossings, roundabouts and other ways of controlling traffic and separating it from pedestrians. Yet the signs and markings are almost universally ignored.
Why should that be? It could be because a supermarket car park is private land, not the highway, and so the signs do not have the force of law they are advisory only. However, that suggests that all drivers are aware of that and deliberately ignore the signs, knowing they are immune from prosecution. I believe the real reason is more basic most drivers are concentrating on their prospective or recent purchases and just do not have spare brain power available to drive properly at the same time.
This has happened to me several times recently: I enter Sainsbury's car park in Newbury and drive along the entry road to turn left into the car park proper further on. A vehicle leaving the car park appears in a road to my left, ignores the 'Give Way' sign and the double white line and continues into the exit road straight into my path. If I should dare to sound my horn as a warning, I get a glare, a shaken fist, a rude finger sign or a tirade of bad language. I'm beginning to wonder if it's my fault does some kind of unwritten 'Prioritι ΰ gauche' rule apply here?
Observe Supermarket Driver (SD) who has finished shopping. He (or it is often a she) wheels the trolley to the car, unloads it, gets himself and the family into the car and reverses out of the parking space, without looking, into the traffic lane. It's up to everyone else to avoid SD's car after all, its reversing lights are on! Reversing out of a parking space is very hazardous, as you often can't see approaching traffic until you are well out of the space. It's far better to reverse into the parking space, so that you can drive out forwards. Even better, look for a double parking space that you can drive into and through to the front row, ready to drive out forwards. The trouble with both of those, for SD, is that they put the car boot on the inside of the space, which is jolly inconvenient for unloading the shopping.
And what of the trolley? Like so many other things nowadays cigarette packets and their wrappings, sweet papers, even fast-food containers it becomes disposable when finished with. People don't so much throw things away as just stop holding them. So the trolley, that SD has finished with and ceased to think about, is abandoned in the parking space, blocking it for the next car. Or, worse, it rolls gently down the incline and into your car, unless you can stop it first. Even if you noticed that SD had let it go and asked: 'Is this your trolley?', he would quite truthfully answer 'No' because it has stopped being 'his' trolley. At this instant it's not his trolley at all It's not even in his consciousness.
The lesson for us all is to be extremely alert in supermarket car parks:
Drive at a very slow speed and watch through, beneath and around vehicles for children.
Look out for reversing lights, and cars starting to move without warning.
Don't expect drivers to obey the road signs and markings, or to behave predictably.
Be aware of drivers having no regard for pedestrians, and then totally ignoring traffic as soon as they become pedestrians themselves.
Despite all the hazards, even the worst supermarket car park should hold no terrors for the advanced driver. They provide an excellent opportunity to put your advanced driving skills into practice.