Dave’s Diary: Survey Sez-Women Park Better Than Men

Well, put a fork in it. It’s official. The debate is over.  Solved by science.  Sorry fellas, we lose! We do it faster but women do it better.  Women can park a car better than men. And that's not all. Women are better than men at finding parking spaces.

I know, I know. I can’t believe it either (except for my wife who is an awesome driver) but that's the results of a British study conducted on gender driving differences according to a report in the  London Telegraph.  Wait, don’t those people drive on the WRONG side of the road? No wonder they find the good parking!

But I digress… British researchers, who were working for the parking firm NCP, covertly placed parking lots across Britain under video surveillance. Each person who parked was graded on seven key components of driving styles. The results:

• In general, women were more adept at maneuvering into a space than were men.
• Women were more accurate in lining up their vehicle before starting each maneuver.
• 52 percent of women aligned their car in the middle of the parking space, compared with just 25 percent of men.
• 39 percent of women were able to cleanly back up into a parking space, compared with just 28 percent of men.
• Men tended to be less patient than women, which caused them to miss open spaces.
• Women had a slower approach to parking, but this allowed them to better find open spaces and see when another driver was about to vacate a space. But men do excel at some things:
• Men were more skilled at driving forward into a parking space.
• Men were more confident overall; that is, fewer men than women opted to reposition the car once it was parked.
• Men parked faster, taking 16 seconds, on average, compared with the 21 seconds women needed to complete the maneuver. Still, once all the criteria were taken into account, women ranked first with a total score of 13.4 out of 20, compared to 12.3 points achieved by men.