German Men Parking Spots Cause Stir, But Who Are Better Drivers?
The German town of Triberg has upset its female citizens by designating certain parking spots as "men only." The spots are notoriously difficult to park in, which is what led Mayor Gallus Strobel to give them to the men.
According to the Associated Press, Strobel explained that the two spots for men require drivers to back in at a diagonal angle and avoid a pillar and wall. He believes it would be extremely difficult for women to maneuver into the spots and decided to make them "men only."
Out of the 220-capacity car park, 12 spots are designated for women, citing the need for safety in badly-lit garages. Strobel told the AP he had received generous support from men who felt discriminated against by the "women only" parking, and that "humorless people" had spoken against his decision.
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The situation in Germany has added fuel to the debate about whether women or men are better drivers. People interested in learning just which group has superior driving skills have conducted all types of research, each with unique results that do not lead to any definitive answer.
For example, a study released by Quality Planning, an analytics company, showed that women make better drivers. The company looked at the number of traffic violations by each sex and found that men, overall, have more violations.
"We were not surprised to see that men have slightly more violations-about 5 percent-that result in accidents than women," president Raj Bhat explained. "And because men are also more likely to violate laws for speeding, passing and yielding, the resulting accidents caused by men lead to more expensive claims than those caused by women," he told MSN.
Yet Tom Vanderbilt, author of "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)," has cited a study at Germany's Ruhr University-Bochum, which specifically focused on men and women's ability to park in a parking garage.
"Women took longer to park the car than men," he explained in the book. "This might be seen as a result of the general tendency for men to take more risks in driving than women, but there was another interesting result: Even though men parked more quickly, they also parked more accurately, as measured by distance to neighboring cars."
