Battle of the sexes takes a U-turn
Almost a third of the 170,000 women who failed their driving test last year for mistakes in reversing or failing to use their mirrors came unstuck on parallel parking. Almost a third of the 170,000 women who failed their driving test last year for mistakes in reversing or failing to use their mirrors came unstuck on parallel parking.
London - It is a question which has long been the source of domestic strife at the wheel.
Are women really worse at parking than men?
Sorry, ladies, official figures have revealed the truth: we are not very good at it.
Almost a third of the 170,000 women who failed their driving test last year for mistakes in reversing or failing to use their mirrors came unstuck on parallel parking.
And if those figures released by the Driving Standards Agency are not enough to ensure a rare victory for men in the battle of the sexes, then they have the support of science as well.
Researchers at the Ruhr University Bochum, in Germany, who asked 65 volunteers to park a £23,000 (about R270 000) Audi, found that women took up to 20 seconds longer than men.
Some women have blamed the problem on the fact their breasts make it more difficult to turn around while parking.
The agency has listed the top five faults by gender for those who failed.
The most frequent - forgetting to check right, left and then right again at junctions - was common to both sexes.
About 1.5million drivers take the test each year. “So far this year the pass rate is 50.7 percent for men and 44.1 percent for women,” said an agency spokesman.
Female drivers need an average 52 hours of tuition to pass but men speed through in just 36 hours of lessons. - Daily Mail