You are reversing out of a perpendicular parking space in a busy supermarket car park and a car drives past behind you along the aisle. Who is required to yield?

Why C is correct

A driver moving in reverse is responsible for the safety of the manoeuvre and must yield to traffic using the aisle as a travel lane. The reversing driver is the one whose view is constrained and whose vehicle occupies space unpredictably, which is why the duty sits there rather than with the through traffic. Traffic in the aisle has its own obligations — reasonable speed, attention, and space around reversing cars — but priority belongs to the established flow of the lane, not to the vehicle backing into it.

Why the other options are wrong

A. The moving car, because you signalled your intention to reverse

A reversing vehicle's signal or reverse lights announce an intention; they do not transfer the right of way. The moving traffic in the aisle is the flow you join, and joining traffic always yields to the flow it joins.

B. Neither, because private car parks are not governed by right-of-way rules

Car parks are governed by the same yielding logic as any other roadway, and most states apply their traffic rules to areas open to public driving. Backing into a moving car because the location was private is still an at-fault collision.

D. Whoever moves first establishes the right of way

First movement deciding priority would reward exactly the behaviour that causes car park collisions: backing out early into a gap that was never yours. The rule is deliberately the opposite — the reversing driver waits for the aisle to be clear.

On the road

Saturday morning at a shopping centre in Aurora: your bay is between two SUVs, and the aisle behind has a rolling queue of cars. You reverse a metre, pause, and check both directions again before completing the manoeuvre, because a red hatchback was hidden behind the left SUV and is now closing. Waiting those extra seconds is the whole rule in action.

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