The results are clear. Men just want to get it in, the quicker the better, while women like to take it nice and slow, making sure they are doing it right… parking that is.
A UK study produced by car park company NCP employed a team of researchers to observe 2500 drivers across its 700 car parks in Britain over a month.
Each aspect of a driver's parking was marked and added to a final tally to produce a parking score for each sex.
Women came out tops with a score of 13.4 out of 20, compared with 12.3 points for men.
The study, one of the most comprehensive conducted on driving differences between the sexes, took into account seven key components of parking.
Thirty-nine percent of female drivers cleanly executed reverses into spaces compared to only 28 percent of men - although men were much quicker at parking, taking 16 seconds on average against the 21 seconds women needed to complete the manoeuvre.
PARKING PERFECTION
Putting this to the test, we pitted a small sample group of men and women against each other. In the men's team were 18-year-old Romano van Blerk, Buhle Mbonambi, 23, and Rowan Sewchurran, 30. In the women's team were Tamryn Naude, 18, Amanda Khoza, 22, and Stefanie van Staden, 42.
The test was designed by TJ van Staden, a former driver licensing inspector for 17 years and now a driving school owner. It included alley docking, parallel parking and a two-part parking perfection test.
The parallel parking test was from the left and right in a bay measuring 7m x 2.6m, with the distance of their back and front tyres to the white line (which served as the kerb) measured. The closer they were to the kerb, the more points they scored out of a possible 30, with a point subtracted for every centimetre the further away they were from the kerb.
EXACTLY IN THE MIDDLE
A point was deducted every time the car rolled. In alley docking we measured how close the car bumper was to the pole (also out of a possible 30 points). The perfection parking was out of 40, which measured how close they could park in a bay without touching the pole, and if they could park the car exactly in the middle of the parking bay. There was no time limit and the test was out of a possible 130 points.
The results?
The female team scored considerably higher than the men.
Van Blerk scored 28 points, parking too far from the curb and rolling a few times.
Mbonambi earned 64 points while Sewchurran scored the lowest, 23 points.
Naude got 47 points, Khoza had 68 with Van Staden getting the highest overall score of 96.
ONLY ONE DRIVER HIT THE POLE
Naude, a fairly new driver, was slightly nervous and put the car into first gear when trying to reverse, much to the amusement of the male participants.
After hitting the pole - the only person to do so in the test - Mbonambi was distraught.
Indignant at the results, Van Blerk said: “Women can drive in car parks, that's all this test proves.”
Sewchurran was shocked to discover he had scored the lowest as he has been driving for more than 12 years.
“Women may be better at parking than men but, if you take three hours to park your car, in reality you could cause a lot of road rage, with frustrated drivers waiting for you to finish parking.
“This doesn't prove that women are better drivers.”
CLEAR RESULTS
Van Staden, however, said the results were clear. He said men were more aggressive drivers while women tended to be more cautious, taking longer to park, making them more efficient parkers.
“Amanda was a slow parker, but in taking her time she scored good points.
Rowan was a confident driver, with one hand on the steering wheel while the other rested on the door with the window wound down. He was confident and quick.
“That is typically how men park.
“The women fared better than the men in all the different categories. They are the overall winners today for parking - but who is the better driver remains to be seen,” he said.
MEN ARE MORE CONFIDENT, WOMEN MORE ACCURATE
The test results were similar to those of the UK study, which found that, while women may take longer to park, they are more likely to leave their vehicles in the middle of the bay. It also found women were better at finding spaces, were more accurate in lining vehicles up before starting each manoeuvre and were more likely to adopt instructors' preferred method of reversing into bays.
Men were shown to be more skilled at driving forward into spaces and more confident overall, with fewer opting to reposition their car once in a bay.
Researchers found impatience caused men to drive too quickly around car parks and therefore miss free bays, while women's slower approach meant that they were better able to notice spaces.
East Coast Radio's “traffic guy” Johann von Bargen, owner of an advanced driving school, said the results were not surprising. “Women are less willing to be rough and tough with vehicles or to take chances when parking.” - Saturday Star