The long debate is over — women are better at parking than men!
Who Finds a Parking Space Quicker?
Women are better at finding a parking space. They’re more patient and drive a little slower while looking, so they’re better equipped to glimpse that empty spot or see when someone is about to leave a parking space. Disclosure: this study focused on public parking garages, not street parking.
Who Has a Better Pre-Parking Pose?
It’s all in the preparation. If you start out correctly, then it’s really easy to park perfectly and impress all those around you. But if you try to wing it, then you’ll be going between Drive and Reverse enough times to embarrass yourself. Once again, women ranked higher in this category with 77% scoring ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ vs 53% of the men getting the thumbs up.
Back Into the Spot or Just Drive Right In?
Even before the women started parking, nearly 40% of them knew they were going to use Instructor Approved ‘Rear Entry Method’ to get into the parking space. Only 28% of the men chose this method, leaving the other 72% to tackle the parking space head on.
Who Gets in the Parking Space the Fastest?
The men were definitely faster, getting their vehicles parked in 16 seconds. The women took 21 seconds. If we park our cars about 3 times a day, and drive for about 50 years, that could mean that women spend 12 days just parking. Men? They get away with just 9 days.
Drive, Reverse, Drive, Reverse
It’s called the ‘Reposition Shuffle’ when you go back and forth between Drive and Reverse to get into the parking space. Who does is more? Women weren’t happy with their first attempt and 56% of them did the shuffle to get better positioned. The men were much happier with their efforts, and only 29% of them felt the need to keep moving the vehicle.
Where Does the Car End Up?
This study gave the highest importance to the cars being parking ‘Centrally’ in the allotted space. Women did this just over half of the time, whereas the men — who got into the space quicker and wanted out, had a ‘Central Finish’ only 25% of the time.
*Study was conducted by National Car Parks (NCP) in the UK, by studying CCTV footage of 453 drivers parking in public parking garages and another 2,000 drivers. The parking spaces were 90 degree stalls, perpendicular to the driving lanes.
Margot Tohn of Park It spends her day coming up with ways to make driving, parking and walking in NYC easier. Check out her musings at www.parkitnyc.com.