Topic 10
Stopping and parking

First the two terms, because almost every test question is built on them. Stopping is the deliberate interruption of a journey; standing longer than three minutes or leaving the vehicle counts as parking. A no-stopping sign therefore forbids both, a no-parking sign only the longer one. Separate those cleanly once and half the topic answers itself.

Then the distances and the places. Parking is forbidden within five metres before and after junctions and side roads. In front of traffic lights a stopping ban applies up to ten metres where your vehicle would hide the signal. There is no stopping on lanes reserved for public transport, on cycle lanes, at narrow or blind spots, in sharp bends, on level crossings, or in front of a driveway where somebody would no longer get out.

The third part is getting in and out, which the regulations explicitly cover: nobody may be endangered by it. In practice that means opening the door with the hand further from it, so the upper body turns and the eyes go backwards, and letting children out on the pavement side. Add the basics of securing the car: handbrake, a gear or the park position, and the front wheels turned towards the kerb on a slope.

• Stopping up to three minutes, anything else is parking
• Five metres clear of junctions and side roads
• No stopping on cycle lanes or bus lanes
• Open doors with a look behind you

In Pempelfort, Derendorf, Flingern and Bilk the pressure on parking is high and resident parking with small plates is the rule rather than the exception. That is where the typical mistakes are made: the car in the second row „just for a minute“, stopping on the cycle lane while picking somebody up, blocking a driveway for five minutes. None of the three is a minor sin, because each forces somebody else to swerve — often a cyclist, out into moving traffic.

Around the Königsallee and in the Altstadt come loading bays and time-limited delivery rights, governed entirely by the small plates. Read the big sign and skip the plate and you are parked illegally. And in narrow old-town streets one rule surprises many people: you may not park opposite a driveway where that leaves the carriageway too narrow to get in and out.

The theory test likes to examine this topic with pictures: a car before a side road, one at a bus stop, one on a Schutzstreifen. You are asked whether stopping, parking or both are forbidden. The distances — five metres at a junction, ten metres in front of a hidden traffic light — are numbers you genuinely have to know by heart.

In practice, parking is one of the set manoeuvres: lengthways or across, forwards or backwards. What is assessed is not elegance but whether you control the vehicle and keep watching the traffic while you do. Correcting your position is allowed; touching the kerb while moving and failing to look behind you are not.

• Stopping or parking — the question before every answer
• Five metres at junctions, ten before a hidden light
• Parking as a set manoeuvre
• Look before you roll when pulling out