BERLIN — Men, get ready to take umbrage. A recent German study found that the fairer sex is better at parking cars than men are.
For the study, students stationed themselves in various parking garages and observed a total of 411 drivers as they parked their vehicles. They were comparing how slow or fast the drivers were able to park their cars in the spaces and how smoothly they did so. The results weren’t even close: women were faster and smoother than men.
Women need on average 17 seconds to park a car, whereas men take three seconds longer, the results show. Men, however, may take some small consolation from the fact that their parking maneuvers generally require fewer turns of the steering wheel.
The researchers also found something else: drivers get better with age. Study participants in the 55-65 age group took 15 seconds to park as opposed to the 22 seconds it took participants in the 18-25 age group. “That’s experience talking,” says study leader Martin Kornmeier.
Because the study partner was the parking garage company Apcoa Parking, the research only took place in such garages. Now then, men might argue that that the study was the driving equivalent of a lab test and that every scientist knows what that means — results can’t necessarily be carried over to the field, which in this case would be the street.
So would the researchers have gotten the same results if they’d been outside on the street? In a customer parking lot for sure, says Kornmeier, but on a busy street the picture might look different.
Other studies have shown, he adds, that sociological factors also play a role in parking a car. “On a street with a lot of traffic, there’s social pressure attached to parking, so under those conditions I think men might be faster. In such situations, they’re tougher. They figure that even if their parking holds up a lot of traffic, they’re going to do it anyway and deal with any fallout after they’re parked.”
