Let’s be honest, parallel parking is not the easiest maneuver to master. Even for seasoned drivers, there is always a little bit of uncertainty. An accident can be just around the corner spinning your car into that tiny parking space. But when doing it, we suggest you not run over vehicles parked in front or behind the space you’re eyeing, as happened in this video of a Corvette getting smashed by an SUV trying to parallel park. 

How did this parallel parking accident happen?

This happened in New York recently in a video posted on YouTube by itowHeavy. It is an almost cartoonish result of parallel parking gone horribly wrong. The driver of the Honda Passport SUV appears to have misjudged several things like space, time, and acceleration. He plunked his Honda into Reverse and hit the go pedal hard. 

The good news is the Passport did what any good SUV should do. Hitting an obstacle, the tires take hold and make climbing over the Corvette an easy task. Not thinking to stop once the Honda driver hit something, he continued to almost glide the SUV completely onto the Corvette.

Was anyone hurt in this parallel parking incident?

What you don’t see in the initial impact is that the driver of the Corvette is in his car. Yes, he’s sitting or was sitting, in the driver’s seat. As this was unfolding, he had the presence to bolt into the passenger seat, avoiding the same fate as his car was incurring. “I see the rear wheel going through my windshield, so I quickly jumped over to the passenger seat, opened the door, and got out,” says the Corvette owner. 

Did the Honda driver think he was running over a discarded cardboard box? Or maybe a stubborn curb? Maybe there was a distraction in the middle of his parallel parking attempt. Maybe the red paint on the Corvette wasn’t bright enough for him to see? 

Do these Honda SUVs have rearview cameras?

What we do know is that he is driving on a suspended license, according to the Corvette owner, who seems very calm in the video for having just escaped injury and having his pride-and-joy Corvette totaled. Kudos to him!

This Honda Pilot is of the generation that arrived in 2009, so it has a backup camera. If it has the navigation option, the backup image is on the nav screen. And if it doesn’t, the image is off to the side of the rearview mirror. Either way, it looks unfortunately like the driver wasn’t using that handy feature. And that he probably wishes he had. 

For your perusal, we’ve got a handy primer on how to parallel park below. We hope you enhance your ability to parallel park seeing it, and we know you’ll be thinking about that smashed Corvette the next time you do parallel park.