Reverse is not my favorite direction of travel, unless I’m not the one driving, or we’re talking about amusement park rides. On this point, I thought, I was in the majority — everyone has a minor-disaster-while-backing-up story from their days of learning to drive, right?

The dire predictions I heard for rush-hour accidents and gratuitous parking tickets when the city of Snoqualmie decided to require reverse-angle parking on Railroad Avenue helped to reinforce my opinion.

Now that they’ve been in use, though, I’ve heard exactly one “official” complaint, and don’t recall a single fender-bender on Railroad Avenue in the police blotter in the past couple of months.

I’ve been doing an extremely informal count of cars parked correctly — back wheels toward the curb, front wheels facing traffic — and those parked the more traditional way, and found that on the average weekday, only about 20 percent of cars are parked incorrectly. Why would that be? None of the incorrectly (and illegally) parked cars seemed to be getting towed or ticketed, so I don’t think it’s any real concern about legality.

“There’s a lot of benefits to it,” says Kamal Mahmoud, project manager with the city of Snoqualmie. There are benefits to the city, of course, including more parking spaces and a potential for slowing traffic down, but he’s not just talking about those.

He’s talking about the family of four with strollers and car seats, who come downtown for a day and don’t have to unload all that equipment from the back, just a few feet from the traffic going by.

The driver of that same car, at the end of the day, won’t have to negotiate backing into evening traffic with a load of tired and/or well-fed kids and adults.

And the people walking or cycling around downtown will probably appreciate that, too.

“It does provide motorists with better vision of bicyclists, pedestrians, and moving cars as they leave the space,” Mahmoud said.

With an office just a block off Railroad, I haven’t tried (or needed) to park in the reverse-angle spots myself, but it seems like it would be a lot like head-in angle parking. The little information I found on reverse-angle parking, often compares it to parallel parking, emphasizing that you have to use your mirrors:

• Drive past the space you want to park in and line up your back wheels with the edge of the space;

• Signal that you are turning;

• Back up to the right, using your mirrors to align your car in the space.

What you absolutely shouldn’t do, according to the signs that are posted, most of the parking guides I found and the Snoqualmie Police, is park head-in at those spaces on Railroad, since you have to cut across oncoming traffic to do it.

Instead, you should circle the block, turning the car to face the right direction for reverse-angle parking — like trying to find a free parking space in Seattle, which is one of many cities that have implemented reverse-angle parking for safety reasons, Mahmoud pointed out.

Mahmoud acknowledged that the reverse-angle parking is a change that will take some getting used to, too, and encouraged people with questions to contact the city office.

“It’s a matter of education,” he says. “We really hope everyone is able to see the benefits of reverse angle parking and start doing that.”

That’s another thing the existing, but limited, info on reverse-angle parking recommends — practice.