The verdict is in, at least in the United Kingdom: Women are better car parkers than men. A parking lot company in the U.K. called National Car Parks conducted a monthlong study in which it evaluated how men and women park. The group covertly studied 2,500 drivers in parking lots and built what it calls a "parking coefficient" to measure things like technique, accuracy and time taken to find a spot and park in it.
Men were, however, better in a few areas like being able to pull into a position and park after the first try: Only 29% of men in the group repositioned their car for another try, while 56% of the women needed multiple shots to get the final position.
This explains why men have problems parking in the center of the space. In the study, 53% of women parked centrally on their first attempt, but only 25% of men were able to do that.
"Parking is our business, so we carried out the research to see how well people park their cars. As an interesting by-product of the research, we've also found out that there's a difference in parking skills between the sexes, although perhaps not the way most people expected," Jo Cooper, NCP's female chief executive, said in a press release.
National Car Parks is the U.K.'s largest private parking lot company. It operates lots in more than 700 locations and has over 200,000 parking spots.