Are You a Parallel-Parking Genius? Too Bad. Driving Tests Don’t Care Anymore.

Maryland recently cut parallel parking from its driving exam. Last month, the state joined more than a dozen others that have dropped the classic test of hand-eye-foot coordination and a rite of passage for wannabe teenage drivers everywhere. Now, if you can back out of a space in a parking lot, that’s good enough.

Steven King, a 37-year-old cook in Las Vegas, said people can’t drive well as it is. “So why do we need to make it easier?” he said. Tracy Turner, of Reno, is sorry to see the skill being lost. She said she considers parallel parking “one of my driving superpowers.”

Some states left parallel parking in the dust long ago. Florida shifted in 1990 to requiring a straight-in parking maneuver. For more than 30 years, California has instead made drivers back up three vehicle lengths. Oregon never had a parallel-parking mandate, but applicants must pull up to the curb and reverse one car length.

Parallel parking exited Maryland’s test in 2015 but remains in the driver’s education curriculum. A Motor Vehicle Administration spokeswoman said the aim was to focus more on safety-related skills. She said the reverse two-point turn, in which applicants back up to turn around, covers the same ground.

Jack Meakin, vice president of Greg’s Driving School, which has locations around Maryland, said agency officials told him the impetus was a huge testing backlog caused by a high parallel-parking failure rate. Maryland’s pass rate lurched higher after the switch. It has topped 68% each fiscal year since 2016, compared with an average of 54% from 2011 to 2015, the MVA says.

Parallel parking, for many people, is really hard. Nerves, a lack of practice, poor instruction or some combination of those can mean a car winds up two feet from the curb, wedged in at a hopeless angle or smack up against another parked car.

Las Vegas resident Diana Barnfield still wants her 15-year-old son to learn how to parallel park and made that clear to the owner of Cantor’s Driving School, which her son will attend.

“A lot of parents are like, ‘Thank God my kid doesn’t have to do it - they’re scared of it,’” she said. “I’m thinking to myself, if your kid is too scared to parallel park, they shouldn’t be driving.”

The Department of Motor Vehicles rejects claims it dumbed down the test.

“Our mission is to make sure that we’re putting safe drivers on the road, and we definitely think that we’re doing that with what we still have in our testing criteria,” said Tonya Laney, DMV field services administrator. She emphasized examiners still look for things like shoulder checks and mirror checks, and assess overall vehicle control.

Las Vegas native April Symmonds, 37, said she hasn’t had to parallel park in a couple of years, with so many lots and garages. And if a driver can’t handle a situation that requires it?

“There’s usually regular parking just a couple blocks down,” said Ms. Symmonds, a teacher.

Downtown Las Vegas has about a thousand on-street spaces, said Brandy Stanley, the city’s parking services manager. The 22-foot spots regularly defeat drivers, she says.

“It is pretty funny to watch some people try to get into a parallel space and they’re nowhere close,” she said.

Parallel parking should have stayed on Maryland’s test, said Paul Graves, owner of Roland Park Driving School in Baltimore. “I think the test should be harder,” he said.

On a recent afternoon, he coached a 16-year-old on parallel parking. The student nearly hit a cone his first go and misjudged the angle on his second, but nailed his third try.

Some who support dropping the parallel-parking requirement say more cars now can self park, but that technology remains uncommon. Just 14% of owners of 2019-model cars reported having the feature, research firm J.D. Power says.

In Nevada, poor parallel parking didn’t necessarily doom an applicant. The maneuver counted for six points out of 100, with 80 the minimum passing score. But hitting the barrels used during the test as stand-ins for parked cars or hopping the curb meant automatic failure.

The state’s pass rate had been falling for years, from 68% in 2011 to 59% in 2019, and DMV examiners felt it was a disservice to flunk otherwise competent drivers for bad parking, Ms. Laney said.

She said her daughters, 19 and 23, just wish the change came before they took their own driving tests. “They’re like, ‘Hey, that’s not fair,’ ” she said.

Driving instructors in Nevada give the move mixed reviews. “They are making it too damn easy,” said Joe Mayorga of Silver State Driving Academy in Las Vegas. Parallel parking helps gauge depth perception, speed control and turning the wheel while reversing, he said.

Rick Mazzoni, owner of Double R Driving School near Reno, said he still teaches the skill but is fine with it off the test because it is seldom needed in Nevada. “If you’re talking about San Francisco or Los Angeles, that’s different,” he said.

Students are happy. When he told a recent class of 20, “they all stood up and gave a standing ovation,” he said. “It was like Christmas for these kids.” Students still find other ways to fail, he said, such as rolling through a stop sign.

Last July, 16-year-old Matt Anczelowitz failed the test on his birthday, in part because he flubbed parallel parking, he said. After lots of practice, he passed his second test.

But he doesn’t know if he will attempt to parallel park in a real-world situation. “If there was a lot of room, yeah, I would probably try,” he said. “Multiple times.”

Write to Scott Calvert at scott.calvert@wsj.com