It's official ‘Women are better at parking than men’

Covert surveillance of car parks across the UK shows women are better at manoeuvring into parking spaces than men. 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 may take longer to park but they are more likely to leave their vehicle in the middle of the parking bay. 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 much quicker at parking, taking 16 seconds on average against the 21 seconds women needed to complete the manoeuvre. However, the extra time paid off leaving 52 per cent of women parked in the middle of each bay, compared to 25 per cent of men. More than three quarters of women were found to excel in their so-called “pre-parking pose”, setting themselves up to pull into a space, compared to just over half of men observed and thirty-nine per cent of female drivers cleanly executed reversing into spaces, compared to only 28 per cent of men.

Vicki Butler-Henderson, the racing driver and television presenter, said “parking in a space is obviously different to reverse parallel parking, but I’m delighted that the fairer sex has come out on top the findings ring true from my experience. “Women do take more time, but I know a lot of male racing drivers who win races and are incredible round a track but can’t park for toffee.”

By Geraldine Ashton Green, motoring.co.uk