Does parking bother you much? Specially, when parking in a confined place? No more fears and tearing of hairs. Here comes BMW with the parking solution of the future; the Park Distance Control (PDC).

Park Distance Control or the PDC is the new technology from BMW to let you park your dear vehicle safely (also making the parked ones safe). It is a device which acts like eyes and ears of you all around your vehicle. The Park Distance Control will tell you whether you are too close to something or not. It uses sound waves to measure distances all around your car. The sensors at the extremities of your car emit sound waves (of course not audible by human ear) which on being reflected (echoed) give you the amount of space between your car and the object. The time gap between the emission and the reception of the echo gives the calculation of distance between the sensor and the reflecting body. The basic operation is similar to the echo-sounders used on board ships and vessels to measure underwater depth.

The Park Distance Control could be very useful if you have low visibility, mirrors obstructed or low lying obstructions around your car. It can monitor all the distances around your car giving you a safe parking manoeuvre.

The Park Distance Control is also very much effective to save small children moving around or animals lying aside. The Park Distance Control will detect also these living creatures and inform you the distance. To make the warning system effective, an audio alarm has been incorporated which generates distinguishable sound signals to warn you.

The present BMW models coming with Park Distance Control have four ultrasonic (emits sound waves with higher frequencies beyond human hearing range) sensors at the front of the car, located in the bumper. Though possibly looking front is not a problem, but these sensors are particularly useful when you are parking with a low visibility or where you have very low obstructions at the front. Then there are four other sensors at the back, of which two are fitted on the rear-bumper corners and two in the centre.

The corner sensors at the rear will emit a beeping warning when you have something within 24 inches range. On the other hand, the centre sensors of the rear bumper will warn you if they detect something within 59 inches. However, whenever any object comes within 12 inches, these beeping warning will turn into solid alarms.

All these alarms are sounded from the concerned part of the car to give you the correct picture of the scene. The alarm becomes intense if you keep on closing the obstacle. The PDC uses differently pitched tones to avoid confusion between a front side alarm and a rear alarm.

The PDC starts working at its own when the car goes backwards and it is shut down automatically when the car reaches a speed of 18 mph. However, you can override the automatic system and switch it on or off manually, too.

In the new BMW from E65 7 Series, the Park Distance Control has a visual display also. It displays a “from the top” view of the parking space (the detection area is 1.5 metres at the front and 2 metres at the back). The obstacles which are detected from the echoes are displayed in solid colours. Thus the driver can have a “god’s view” of the parking game.

Let’s call it the new BMW parking manoeuvre video game!