A new survey that found women are significantly better at parking a car than men has been described as “pretty damning”.
The research carried out by insurance firm Forbes Advisor interviewed 2,000 adults and found 21% of men admitted they had been in a collision while parking in the past 12 months - compared to 14% of women.
Speaking to Moncrieff, Sunday Independent motoring correspondent Geraldine Herbert said she did not find the research surprising as women are “much better parkers”.
“I tell you what I am surprised about, it’s the amount of accidents that occur and scrapings that occur in parking,” she said.
“Almost one in four across both sexes, 23% confess to either hitting or scraping obstacles while parking in the last year - that’s pretty damning, isn’t it?
“I think I’ll be thinking twice about taking a car into a car park in the near future.”
Digging a little deeper into the figures, she said she was alarmed to learn so many drivers were open about having poor driving skills.
“More than one in 10 admit they park in two bays because they lack confidence parking in tight spaces.
“Why are these people on the road?”
Woman parking a car.Ms Herbert said it raised questions about whether the current driving test is fit for purpose.
“Maybe there are just things that should be included that aren’t?” she said.
“You don’t really do a whole load of parking; the test hasn’t changed that much from when I did it and it was basically you parked back at the test centre and you had to park it neatly and preferably reverse park it in.
“Then, if you did that you were fine.”
Despite this, she said it is a problem that might solve itself in the years ahead due to advances in technologies.
“Some [gadgets] can even reverse park your car, parallel park it - whatever,” she said.
“So, maybe it’s a skill set we just don’t need but we certainly don’t have it in any great numbers at the moment.”
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Main image: Woman looking back while reversing.
