Men really ARE better at parking... and that's a woman professor talking



A female driver confused the brake and gas pedals as she reversed into a space in a parking garage in Langenhagen, Germany

It's a thorny subject, so it is probably just as well it was a female scientist who confirmed that men are better at parking than women.

Men were typically five per cent more competent at parallel parking - where the car draws alongside anther vehicle before reversing into a bay - according to research.

They were also better at driving head-on into a space and then reversing into place.

During the tests, in which volunteers were asked to repeatedly park a saloon car, psychologists found women didn't benefit from the extra 20 seconds they took to complete the manoeuvres on average.

In fact, they tended to end up much closer to the edge of the bays than the male drivers, despite showing far more caution.

The scientists from Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, concluded men benefit from superior co-ordination and spatial awareness because their brains can process the changing position and speed of a car quicker than women's.

The study's co-author, Dr Claudia Wolf, a PhD student at the university's Department of Biopsychology, said she became interested in the subject because of the number of chauvinistic comments she encountered about women drivers.

'These prejudices exist and, as a scientist, I decided to find out if they are true or based on myth,' she said.

'I don't think feminism or the cause of women is in any way set back by these findings. It only proves what

previous studies about the spatial differences between men and women have shown.

'Besides, it is not as if there was a massive failing by women. It is just about parking - not the triumph of men over women.'

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Some 65 volunteers with varying degrees of driving experience were asked to park a £23,000 Audi A6 automatic in a 15ft by 6ft space in a university car park.

The drivers' skill was calculated by checking how central the car was in the bay at the end of the manoeuvre.

One area that vexed the psychologists was how the extra time and caution displayed by the women provided no benefit.

They noted: 'The marked difference in parking duration could be explained in terms of general driving habits. Several studies prove that men take greater driving risks.

'However, a sex difference in riskassessment leading to women parking more cautiously, and thus more slowly, does not explain why women's final parking position was less accurate than men's, especially for parallel parking.

'Slower driving should lead to a better and not worse result.'

Germaine Greer said the study was 'pointless'.

The feminist writer added: 'I can believe that men were proven to have a very significant advantage in spacial awareness when it comes to parking.

'You must remember that women also have bosoms which makes it very difficult to turn around.

'However, did we really need to know this? Should we now stop women from parking? Of course not.'