The battle of the sexes – who is better at parking?

Do you drive through a car park and tut at other drivers because you think they’re driving stupidly? And men, have you ever said to yourself “I bet it’s a woman!” Well, you may be mistaken because a comprehensive study on gender driving differences has highlighted some very interesting findings.

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.

The highlights of their report showed:

• Women may take longer to park but they are more likely to leave their vehicles in the middle of a bay. On average, a woman takes an extra 5 seconds to park than men.
• Women are more accurate in lining themselves up before starting each manoeuvre.
• 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.
• Researchers found that impatience caused many men to drive too quickly around car parks, meaning they missed free bays. Meanwhile, women’s slower approach meant they were better able to notice spaces, or spot when other drivers were about to leave.
• From the figures, the study concluded that, as the average motorist parks a car 1,004 times in their lifetime, women spend 12 days of their lives parking compared to nine days for men.

The findings contradict not only popular belief but also previous research. Earlier figures from the Driving Standards Agency disclosed that tens of thousands more women fail their driving test on parking errors than men.

Our company employs parking experts. Our senior team has over 30 years of experience in airport parking and between us we have parked more than 3 million cars! I love Meet and Greet has two fabulous teams of both men and women; one at Gatwick and one at Stansted.

The debate about parking will continue as long as there is still a battle of the sexes, fuelled by anecdotal evidence such as the YouTube video which shows a lady taking over 30 minutes to parallel park a car in Belfast.

Even driving overall is a battle ground for men and women. Town Centre Car Parks are definitively trying to answer the age old question of who are the better drivers; men or women?

By developing an entertaining interactive infographic, Town Centre Car Parks have decided to put it to the test inviting visitors to enter basic information including the number of points and fines they have received on the road.

With hundreds of entries so far, the infographic results currently show that women have come out on top. With the least points and fines, the myth is finally proved wrong: men are not the better drivers.

The infographic can be viewed at https://towncentrecarparks.com/battle-of-the-sexes

By Sarah Anglim at 18 Nov 2014