Women Park Better Than Men from Page 52
I have frequently noted my husband’s strange parking strat-
egy, and in one aspect, it fits perfectly with the results shown in the NCP study: He zips by at least five empty parking spots before he slows down enough to get into one. I can’t understand why he does that … But there are a lot of things about him I don’t get even after
15 years of marriage: such as why he tells me the life story of his favorite college basketball team’s center and thinks I will actually be interested. Or why he can’t see the whiskers he leaves all over the bathroom sink when he shaves. And no amount of couple’s counseling is going to change the annoying way he eats cereal. Despite the cereal thing, my husband was really good at
changing diapers during our diaper days (which, mercifully, end- ed a year and half ago). He also was an Eagle Scout and so very handy in an emergency or camping trip. And in a slight crossover characteristic, he’s excellent at choosing paint colors. Last but not least, he’s very good at parallel parking – almost
as good as I am – and I say that because my car is twice as big as his and that counts for something, right? National Car Parks is the UK’s largest private parking lot
company. It operates lots in more than 700 locations and has with more than 200,000 parking spaces. Rather than waste all the great data it gathered, the company is addressing the specific needs of both sexes. “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. As a result of the research, and to help people park better, NCP
is looking to install parking aids in many of its carparks, she said. “[They] will include ‘stop lollipops’ at the back of each space
and raised ‘park central’ markers in the front of the bays so driv- ers can align their tires and park in the center of the space. This addresses two areas that people seemed to struggle with,” Coop- er added. It feels good to have this issue settled once and for all. There
are many similar points of dissention between the genders that ought to be resolved. A few things we already know are that women live longer, tolerate pain better, and are more effective at multitasking. While I write this column, I’m actually cooking a roast,
minding two children, and acting as my own general contractor on the remodel of my bathroom. In a few minutes, I will go wipe the whiskers off the counter
in my bathroom and then take a moment to tinker with the DVR. Later, I will head to the mall for some retail therapy, where I
will park safely, quickly and accurately, with pride in myself and my gender, and buy a pair of shoes I do not need.
Melissa Bean Sterzick is an Amateur Parker and PT’s proofreader. She can be reached at
Melissa@parkingtoday.com.
For complete results of the NCP study, visit
www.ncp.co.uk and click on “News & Events” (in small type) near the bottom of the home page.
PT
700 Phoenix Lake Avenue, Streamwood, IL
54
venue, Streamwood, IL 60107
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