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Few things are more irritating than finding a fresh door ding, but it's hard to avoid them. Whether you're driving to the grocery store, work, or the doctor's office, chances are you're going to have to park your vehicle in a parking space, next to other vehicles.

Your best efforts to avoid door dings and scratches can be enhanced by assessing your surroundings before choosing a parking space. Consider these common sense parking tips next time you're out and about:

• If an end spot is available, that's normally your best bet.
• Consider parking as far away as possible, odds of someone cramping your car that far out is more remote.
• Before you pull into a space look at the length of the doors on the other vehicle(s), if those doors were fully extended could they reach your vehicle?
• Look at the height of the vehicle you are parking next to, if it is another vehicle similar in height to yours and if your car has protective rubber door moldings those moldings may protect your car's doors, but SUV's and truck doors are taller and may cause dents higher than your moldings can protect, move to another spot.
• Always try to look at the car next to you and determine if there may be passengers (at work maybe not, the mall, probably) this may impact which side of the vehicle you park on. If you're at work and figure there are no passengers, maybe parking on the passenger side of that car is good, at least you can protect one side of your car.
• If you have to enter a parking space where another car is crowding one side of the space you'll have to decide how best to handle that risk. Never park crooked because someone is crowding the space, if the car that's crowding the space leaves you will now look like the one that can't park. Always try to park straight.
• Child seats – If you pull into a space and the car you are parking next to has child seats in it remember for a parent to properly strap their child in they normally need to fully extend their doors. This could be a good sign to find another space.

In the end, a door dent here and there may be inevitable. There are companies that perfor Paintless Dent repair. This is the art of using special tools to push the dent out from the inside without the need for painting the dent. It's clean and many times the repair can be performed while you wait.