NEWS INTERNATIONAL NEWS
IT’S A NO- BRAINER
The way men and women locate their vehicles in crowded car parks is different, according to a study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology.
A FINE MESS
Despite vehicles being towed away and a staggering 38,500 bookings made for parking violations in just two weeks, motorists in Hyderabad, India, seem to be ignoring the ‘no parking’ signs that have been put up along the main thoroughfares.
The cases booked were for things including wrong parking, bus bay violations and blocking free left turns in the city. Despite vehicles being towed away, immobilised using metal clamps or the issue of ‘challans’ (receipt for payment) by the traffic police, many of the main roads continue to be choked as the carriageway is occupied by parked vehicles, often parked in two rows. Unauthorised parking has become a major concern for traffic managers in Hyderabad, and a number of special measures have been launched to solve
the problem, yet it still persists. ‘Many of the shops do not have sufficient parking areas,’ says one police official. ‘Even in those that do have parking facilities, people park their vehicles right in front of shops rather than in the cellars [spaces].’
The motorists’ excuse for violating this rule is that they park their vehicles for ‘just a few minutes’. But what they do not realise is that these few minutes potentially trigger traffic jams that could take a long time to clear. Most shopping complexes and malls have parking provisions for their customers, but not for auto rickshaws. ‘Hyderabad Central is the best example. Because people visiting the mall need these autos, it becomes difficult for us to clear the area on a permanent basis,’ says one local police officer.
PARKING CHAMP HITS THE SPOT
A 45-year-old German woman has been crowned ‘German parking champion’ after beating four men and three women. Sabine Langer, from Düsseldorf, successfully completed five tests, including squeezing a nine-metre- long limousine into a parking space, blind parking and getting to grips with horizontal gears – the kind used in a Citroen 2CV. She also had to park a rickety old three-wheeler. Langer said that her winning techniques were all down to practice.
12 NOVEMBER 2012
‘As an industrial clerk, I drive a lot and often have to park in tiny bays, which I see as a challenge,’ she said. The hardest part was parking an articulated lorry, she said. For that round, women had to wear platform shoes and men wore high heels.
‘There are men who say that a woman winning the parking championships would not be possible,’ she said. By way of advice, Langer recommends practising. ‘Just try it out, and when a gap is too small, pull out.’
www.britishparking.co.uk
The research showed that males and females use different spatial memory techniques to find their cars in crowded parking lots. Women relied more on visible landmarks and took substantial detours, while men were better at estimating distances and were more likely to take a direct route to the vehicle. The subjects were 115 shoppers, 59 men and 56 women, at a mall in the Netherlands. Each underwent interviews and tests designed to assess spatial memory, or the ability to remember where things are in the world. Around 59 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men reported having some or frequent problems retracing their cars in parking lots, though the difference wasn’t statistically significant. Landmarks were used by 38 per cent of women compared with 15 per cent of men; 21 per cent of women and seven per cent of men said they often took detours of up to 400ft before finding their vehicle. Men were significantly better than women at estimating the car’s location on a map, while 83 per cent of women and 81 per cent of men reported using conscious strategies to find it.
KOMAR / SHUTTERSTOCK
IOFOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK
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