What to do when your car is wedged against a garage wall
Trying to wiggle out of a tight spot often turns a minor scrape into a car jammed directly against a wall. Once it gets wedged, shifting into reverse or drive stops working entirely and leaves drivers unsure whether moving forward or backward will cause worse damage.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Reversing the steering steps used to get into the positionDid this help you?
- 2Folding mirrors inDid this help you?
- 3Using a floor jack and car dollies to manually shift the vehicleDid this help you?
- 4Having a spotter guide the driver outDid this help you?
- 5Using a floor jack to lift the corner of the car and placing a spare wheel or wooden plank underneathDid this help you?
- 6Putting a plank of wood against the curb and backing up slowlyDid this help you?
- 7Revving the engine to get enough momentum to reverseDid this help you?
- 8waiting for it to randomly go into gearDid this help you?
- 9checking or replacing the brake pedal switchDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“At a complete loss.”source ↗
“What’s the best next move to do I tried reversing and it’s not moving”source ↗
“Should I drive forward or will that do worse damage to my car”source ↗
“This happened today randomly at a gas station, was stranded for about a half an hour until I got it to randomly go in gear.”source ↗
“I just bought the truck two weeks ago so who knows. Sigh.”source ↗