It may come as a surprise to a large number of male van drivers working on the roads of the UK to discover that the fairer sex are deemed to be better at parking their vehicles than men.
That is the result of a survey carried out in National Car Parks (NCP) across the country, and commercial vehicle insurance providers confirm that males do have more scrapes in car parks than females.
The survey was conducted in car parks across the UK where CCTV cameras recorded the actions of motorists over several weeks. The survey showed that women fare better than men in almost every facet of parking a car. Admittedly female drivers were slower at negotiating around the car parks but this gave them a better view of where empty spaces were and allowed them to find a space more quickly. They also managed to park straight and in the middle of the parking bay more often than men, and reversed into spaces (generally considered the correct way) more often than men.
The researchers marked drivers out of a score of 20 and overall figures gave women drivers 13.4 while males could only manage 12.3. However, the results were questioned from several quarters with one male van driver saying: “The real test of a person’s parking ability comes when they have to parallel park in a busy street with very little room to manoeuvre and at the same time being aware of working to a schedule, not parking up in a shopping mall.”
James May, a presenter on the TV show Top Gear, said “Parking in the centre of a bay is not always the best policy – especially if a neighbouring car is parked too close to the dividing lines. You have to take into consideration the cars parked next to you – you ought to be judged on how central you are to them.”
The researchers disclosed that on average we will park our cars thousands of times in our life and that women will spend a total of 12 days completing the manoeuvres whilst men will spend 9.
Tags: commercial vehicle insurance, National Car Parks, van drivers