Safer Parking Lot Design

Typical parking lots seem like they’re designed for cars first and people as an afterthought. The common layout is rows of stalls with the cars facing each other with no space between, so the only walking path ends up being walking down the roadway cars are driving and behind the cars backing out. Drivers are forced to inch out blindly looking for people who may be walking, and if there is someone, doing that awkward “you go, no you go, no you go” standoff. It could be a whole lot better.

A safer design acknowledges that people drive cars, get out of them and need a space to walk. If you remove one column of parking and turn that space into a dedicated walkway in front of the parked cars, people aren’t forced to walk in an area that cars backout and drive. True, with this layout you lose some parking spots, but most of the farthest aways spots are typically empty (unless you’re at Costco). It’s a small tradeoff for a layout that’s safer to walk and drive in, better for everyone.

Updated: A suggestion from Hacker News discussion was to prevent all people and cars sharing any roadway by turning each column to a cul-de-sac. Its a solid suggestion, and definitely the safest route, but the inefficency in searching for spots and having to do three-point turns to turn around would be too much. I adjusted so not every column, but the main middle column goes straight to store.

Created: Dec 28, 2025