Its always easier to reverse into a space and drive out, unfortunately that means either squeezing past the car with the trolley to the boot, or leaving the trolley at the front of the car and carrying shopping to the boot, neither particularly hard IMO but seemingly impossible for some.

Several problems with modern cars, the design of most leaves massive blind spots especially to the rear 2/3rds view, the cars are often far too big for the driver to cope with and being FWD in most cases have the turning circle of a supertanker, but the main problem seems to be the total incompetence of people to either choose a car they can cope with or learn to drive the one they bought properly.

I've seen male drivers of these huge repmobiles Mondeos and other oversized barges make a complete pigs ear of parking in normal parking spaces, its almost painful to watch and motorway service areas provide hilarious viewing, driving in forwards oblivious to the sensibility and ease of reverse parking, then trying to get a huge car with a useless lock forwards into a space with inadequate room in one shunt when its blindingly impossible, often ending up leaving the car togther with all the other poorly driven junk in the row in a herringbone pattern....i say male drivers for the reason that in most cases female drivers either have the sense to drive a car they can manage or in the cases of females in big cars are usually competent drivers.

Incidentally one of the many reasons i don't own a FWD car, apart from driving displeasure, is that RWD cars do generally have a decent steering lock and not so fashionably shaped as to be almost impossible to see out of in any direction.

Most car parks do have some sort of one way system, they obviously economically have to fit as many vehicles as possible into the available space, and back to back rowed parking is the most space effective.

Why can't operators of car park create one way systems.

Why can they not paint the lines diagnoly so driving in and out is easier

On the general point, while there's a lack of common sense and courtesy in failing to give way or walking behind people, it's the reversing drivers responsibilty to keep a look out. As GB says though modern cars with letterbox rear screens and tiny side windows don't

Station car parl was redesigned a couple of years ago to maximise spaces. One way round. It just gets ignored.

I suspect diagonals are less efficient in use of space and are effectively one way.

Why is it that when I am backing out of a space in the supermarket and I am half way out, some idiot decides to squeeze past me, leaving me to slam on the brakes.

Guilty as charged.

I think it comes down to driver attitude towards egress from a parking space. I take the view that vehicles on the road have priority and that cars emerging vehicles should wait until the pathway is clear before emerging from the parking space.

I maintain this rule and always wait patiently until the road is clear. So I do get irritated when-having waited to perform my own manoeuvre-I am made to wait when a car decides to barge its way out. The fact that the culprit is usually a large SUV that will almost invariably makes a pig's breakfast out of the manoeuvre adds to the annoyance, so I do sometimes force my way past and force them back into the space. Churlish I know.

Using the "herring bone" layout would be best for safety - not only does it facilitate ingress/egress from spaces, it helps drivers on the road see the car backing out and would (by virtue of the directionality of the spaces' layout) encourage flow only in on direction. To be honest most car parks are very poorly laid out - what is most useful if they have have separate entrance and exits to direct traffic exiting the car park away from the entrance (often the cause of grid lock).

As has been said, the reduction to ridiculously small sizes for the spaces and the lack of provision for over-sized vehicles (and penalties for bad parking/in the wrong area) don't help either. Most car parks (especially supermarkets) have no provision for vans and lorries, who often pop in to get some lunch and have a break (this happens a lot at my local Tesco - they park up over several spaces and really get in the way.

Councils need to really get their act together to make this work. Too often they appear to be "best buddies" with the shop/car park developer/owner who just want to squeeze as many people into them as possible - mainly because they can them blame "bad drivers" or each other ("council rules" for numbers of spaces, or "greedy firms" for poor layouts to make "more profits"). This cannot be bad for the insurers, as they would never make a loss on the extra payouts in this area, hence why they don't complain (IMHO their stance that they mostly lose money on motor insurance is a BIG LIE).

Whenever a council is looking at a new development, we all need to make representations to them in this regard, otherwise they do nothing because most councillors (like most politicians) have little knowledge of the real world and care more about being in power, rather than serving the needs of the public.

Soon after I learnt to drive I had a very lucky escape. Whilst backing out of a parking space one dark wet evening a child ran past my car. It was my late grandfather's SAAB 99, the car did not have a rear window wiper or heated rear window, and this window was wet and misted up so my visability was almost non-existant. Of course, children do not know the significance of reversing lights (two of them, as this was before the hated one sided rear lights became so popular) so he or she just continued to run to their destination.

I did stop in time, and had a very frank conversation with the child's parents. I was lucky, and from this time until now (over 30 years) I always back into parking bays and drive out forwards. I also only select cars with rear window wipers.