I have kerbed a wheel. Quite notably. This is something that deeply irritates and embarrasses me from a point of professional pride: not to blow my own trumpet, but I’m pretty good at parking cars. You probably are too, or you certainly would be if you had to shuffle them around a tight office car park as much as your Autocar correspondents do. 

I wasn’t good on that morning, though – not two and a half hours into what would be a four-hour drive, when what I needed was a quick break. 

For context, the road in question has marked parking bays along one side, empty, so I was just easing into one as I approached forwards. But it is a narrow road, so a parked car leaves enough room for just one car to pass it, and then without much generosity. 

It is lined, as country town roads often are, on both sides by old-fashioned, rough-hewn, brick-shaped kerb stones – attractive and rustic but unforgiving. 

I needed to be close to the kerb so that I wasn’t poking out into the road where my mirrors might receive a whack from a passing car or so that I didn’t squeeze one too far towards the kerb on the opposite side. I wanted to not be a bother. 

My Skoda Kodiaq vRS is 1864mm wide across the body, 2133mm across the (extended) mirrors, so it isn’t a narrow car. Hence I wanted to park as close to the kerb as possible. These, then, are the excuses.

That’s not bad, a bit closer, a tiny bit, closer… graunch. Urgh. This is going to be a faff, and expensive. These kerbs really are unforgiving. And I feel terrible. 

Should I, though, really? 

I used to feel guilt when the shower cubicle in my hotel room leaked, say if its door or curtain didn’t secure properly or was located in the wrong place, so that when I got out of the shower I’d notice a pool of water on the bathroom floor. I’d diligently mop it up with towels while feeling like I’ve let the side down, of course. Very British: apologies, chaps. 

But actually I’ve come to realise that this isn’t my fault at all. My shower at home doesn’t throw water over the bathroom floor, yet it was decorated and is maintained by me, and I’m not a bathroom expert. Hotel bathrooms are designed and made by people whose job it specifically and literally is, yet some of them still leak everywhere. Sort it out, hotel bathroom people. (Also if you could design it so I could turn on the water from outside without it splashing all over my arm, that would be super-helpful, thanks.) 

Anyway, likewise, should I be tired of feeling that bad for kerbing an alloy wheel when I wasn’t being careless? I didn’t design the car to be two metres wide. I didn’t design it with 20in, black, polished alloy wheels that protrude from low-profile tyres. And is it realistic to expect that the people who built the original track during the medieval period could have anticipated and designed for its later conversion into a two-lane road and then, a er 600 years, the arrival of two-metre-wide cars with diamond-cut alloy wheels? 

And should I be better at knowing to the nearest millimetre (I wanted to park within 100mm of the kerb, really) where my wheel is, when it’s maybe two and a half metres away from me and I can’t see it? 

There is a limit, I think, to quite how guilty I should feel about that. What I could (and I acknowledge should) have done is stop ahead of the bay and reverse for the last few moments, with a lowered door mirror to help me, but you don’t get an excellent view of the Kodiaq, the focal length is maybe six metres and it still wouldn’t have shown me the front wheel (protruding more, on lock, than the rear one). The risk would still have been evident. 

I don’t want to single out the Skoda here, by the way. It could – and would – have been anything that day. As previously with the bodywork of supercars, wheels are being increasingly placed in harm’s way needlessly. I still feel bad, but modern car design has got a case to answer.