Covert surveillance of car parks across Britain reveals that women are better parkers than men, according to the Telegraph.
The surveillance has shown that while women may take longer to park, they are more likely to leave their vehicles in the middle of a bay.
According to the Telegraph, the study is one of the most comprehensive ever conducted on gender driving differences, and took into account seven key components of parking styles.
Women were also found to be better at finding spaces, more accurate in lining themselves up before starting each manoeuvre, and more likely to adopt instructors’ preferred method of reversing into bays.
Men were shown to be more skilled at driving forwards into spaces and more confident overall, with fewer opting to reposition their car once in a bay.
But once all the elements were taken into account, women were ranked first with a total score of 13.4 out of 20, compared to 12.3 points achieved by men.
Neil Beeson, a professional driving instructor who devised the experiment, described the results as “surprising”.
He said: “In my experience men have always been the best learners and usually performed better in lessons.
“However, it’s possible that women have retained the information better. The results also appear to dispel the myth that men have better spatial awareness than women.
“It shows that us men need to give our partners more respect when it comes to parking. The facts don’t lie.”
The study was produced by the car park firm NCP, which employed a team of researchers to observe 2,500 drivers across its 700 car parks in Britain over a one-month period.
Click here to read the full Telegraph report.
I recall a young driver extension programme we ran in West Sussex. After initial evaluation, it was changed to incorporate a parallel parking exercise for all candidates – male and female – because many novice drivers found this difficult and avoided using some parking spaces as a result, but only the girls would admit to this. Making it a compulsory session for all meant that the lads then got the extra practice they needed (and knew they needed) but without losing face.
Honor Byford, North Yorkshire
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No shock here!! My wife will put many a man to shame she can park the car in the tighest of spaces first time and every time. Oh yes – not here in London, but busy Brussels!
Gareth Tuffery Epsom & Brussels
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This is likely to be a reflection of the attitude of genders post-test. I’m not surprised to hear of this, at face value, incongruent result.
Males do perform better before the test, are better spatially and are more successful at passing it. However, females have far fewer collisions once they pass the test – possibly an indication of more agreement with the rationale of how they’ve been trained and this leads to a more considerate driving style and therefore different parking behaviour.
I’m sure other instructors would agree with me that male learners often over-rate their ability and female learners are easier to chat to about why skills are being taught in a certain way.
Studies and statistics worldwide support a strong difference between the genders in relation to road use and it is always interesting to observe these and speculate about why they have come about (in a nutshell – a combination of evolution and conditioning).
Dr James Whalen ADI, Wolverhampton
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