# So... spatial awareness...



## RandomDude (Dec 18, 2010)

So I keep hearing all this stuff that women can't drive etc but I've always been lenient enough to judge on an individual basis. Still, I started hearing about "spatial awareness" and how women have less. I found this:

Men ARE better than women at parking: Feminist scientists proves what sexist motorists have known all along | Daily Mail Online

Is this true?

I have to admit, my FWBs/GFs always wanted me to drive because they told me they hated to park. Ex-wife however, she never made a mention of it. Just curious...


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## Faithful Wife (Oct 31, 2012)

Women are Better Drivers Than Men: Study | NBC Southern California


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## Faithful Wife (Oct 31, 2012)

Women Top Men in Parking Skills, UK Study Asserts - ABC News


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

Not so fast, FW 

Compare miles driven by gender and account for traffic conditions and the like and I don't think you will find the premise holds. Also account for age and you'll find once you have a nice sample of 25-60 year olds you'll find they're the same.

This is a bit heavy reading but interesting

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/1007/83596.0001.001.pdf?sequence=2

Or even worse...

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index....ivers_more_crashes_than_men_less_driving.html

"Researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed 6.5 million car crashes in the U.S. between 1998 and 2007. Female drivers were found to be involved in 68.1 percent of all crashes, according to The Daily Mail.

The results are especially surprising given that men were found to drive 60 percent of the time, while women only 40 percent. In other words, women got in more accidents despite driving less than the opposite sex."

In terms of spatial ability, it's a Gift. Some people have it and can think in 3 dimensions. They're very visual. My older girl is like that. I am like that. Both of us are design people. And while the design field is still male dominated talented women are making a lot of progress.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

Spatial awareness has nothing to do with parking. I can't parallel park my freaking Mini Cooper to save my life. My daughter drives a similar size car (Honda Fit) and has no problems. She parallel parks daily in her college town while I do it once a year.


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## Faithful Wife (Oct 31, 2012)

Don't know what to say, John. Consistently studies have shown that women are safer drivers, die less often in self caused accidents and kill less people in self caused accidents, and cause less material damage in accidents than men.


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## Constable Odo (Feb 14, 2015)

I always thought women were spatially aware because they certainly know when a cake falls in the kitchen...


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

Elementary, my dear FW 

Self selecting samples. People who drive Volvos are safety minded so Volvos are safer cars 

That's why adjusting for miles driven and age is key.


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## Faithful Wife (Oct 31, 2012)

I guess I will just trust the millions of dollars that insurance companies put into these studies and their results then, which state that women are better drivers, time after time, and not just of Volvos.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

They're more careful drivers - a mom with a minivan full of kids and all that - but not safer or better. The mom will wisely stay home in a snow storm or send hubby to Costco but the pizza delivery 20 year old has to be out there.

Also men work driving jobs at FAR higher rates than women and that skews the numbers. Ten to one for big Class 8 rigs, and not much better for local deliveries, etc.


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## Faithful Wife (Oct 31, 2012)

And.....all of that boils down to.....women are better drivers.


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## SecondTime'Round (Jan 15, 2015)

I'm a pretty decent parallel parker in a smallish vehicle. 

I would not even try to parallel park a Dodge Ram.


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## thatbpguy (Dec 24, 2012)

Women "cause" more accidents due to their passive driving tendencies.


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## Satya (Jun 22, 2012)

Two things I will offer with complete honesty.

1.) I do have trouble parking in between the lines, and I have no issue admitting this to my SO or anyone else. This IS a spacial processing issue for me personally, and I acknowledge it and embrace it.

2.) I was lucky to have had two parents that lived for many years in a busy city, which is generally thought of as one hell of a place to learn to drive. The lesson I received from both parents regarding driving: be defensive, but DON'T BE CHICKEN.

So, I have always tried to be a defensive (aware of others), non-chicken-sh!t (PUNCH IT, CHEWIE) driver. It has kept me and my passengers safe thus far.


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## OnTheFly (Mar 12, 2015)

Faithful Wife said:


> And.....all of that boils down to.....women are better drivers.


And you say you aren't a feminist…..despite everything John posted and said, haha, ok!

On the few occasions we've moved our household, wifey was in a panic because she couldn't imagine how everything was going to fit in the truck. It did, of course, I made it, using my superior spatial awareness skills. (…..and yet she can parallel park just fine, so 5% of me thinks she can pack a truck just fine, but tricks me into doing it????)


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## Marduk (Jul 16, 2010)

I know some execs in the insurance industry.

"Women being safer drivers" is true in terms of insurance claims.

But it's not an inbuilt biological thing. It's a cultural artefact of women being socialized to be less aggressive.

And it's fading... rapidly. This will likely be the last generation that women's insurance premiums will be any different than men's.

Thats what they told me. And a quick google search says the same thing.

Interestingly, in the EU, it's actually illegal to charge men more based on their gender. So it's been equalized. Equality cuts both ways.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

Premiums aren't necessarily a good way to tell safer . For years I drove a Saab 900 SPG - very safe and capable car except most people overdid it and also it was pricy to fix after an accident.


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## Constable Odo (Feb 14, 2015)

OnTheFly said:


> And you say you aren't a feminist…..


Admitting you have a problem is the first step in recovery...


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## Justinian (Mar 7, 2015)

RandomDude said:


> So I keep hearing all this stuff that women can't drive etc but I've always been lenient enough to judge on an individual basis. Still, I started hearing about "spatial awareness" and how women have less ...


My opinion on this is that it has less to do with gender and more to do with occupations. I think that men tend to work at jobs that require "spatial awareness" more than women (I have no data to prove that). Men who work in construction can usually walk into a room and guess any dimension within less than an inch. Women who do the same work can do the same thing, there are just fewer of them.

My working years were spent in the automotive industry. It was typical for me to drive many different cars every day, and under many different circumstances, including crowded lots and very tight parking spaces. I can now park almost any sized vehicle in any sized space without even thinking about it. Not because I'm a man, but because of my past experience.

It has been 50 years since my last traffic citation, and in 53 total years of driving I have never had an accident, not a single scratch on a fender. I think I could easily be classified as a better than average driver. Again, that has less to do with my gender and more to do with my occupational experience.


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## Constable Odo (Feb 14, 2015)

Justinian said:


> My opinion on this is that it has less to do with gender and more to do with occupations. I think that men tend to work at jobs that require "spatial awareness" more than women (I have no data to prove that). Men who work in construction can usually walk into a room and guess any dimension within less than an inch.


Women just have a different type of spatial awareness.

For example, they know the garbage can in the kitchen is 2'x1' and when its over 4' full, they call you to take out the garbage.

They know the laundry basket is 3'x2' and when it is full to the top (the 3rd dimension) it is time they do the laundry.


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## ConanHub (Aug 9, 2013)

I think men are generally more aggressive and push the limits more.

Anecdotally, I operate vehicles far better than any female relatives or my wife. My sister had the same access to cars and motorcycles growing up but could not approach the level I could operate them at.

I had one aunt who was pretty good though.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Thor (Oct 31, 2011)

Faithful Wife said:


> I guess I will just trust the millions of dollars that insurance companies put into these studies and their results then, which state that women are better drivers, time after time, and not just of Volvos.


Young men certainly get into more accidents than young women. Young men drive faster and thus have more spectacular and costly accidents.

On the other hand, males seem to be more skilled at manipulating a car accurately. Watching moms try to parallel park at my kids' school was always entertaining!

I think one needs to define terms a little better. What does it mean to be a "better" driver? Is it fewer accidents? Is it more skill?

The statistics of accidents per mile or per hour can also be misleading. Without having looked at it in detail I don't have an opinion on those numbers, but I have looked at other similar types of studies wrt aviation and found greatly misleading results.

Spatial skills are important to driving, but so are judgement, safety attitude, situational awareness, and basic skill making the car do what you want it to.

I do know my MIL and W scare me when driving. My daughters are good drivers and don't scare me. My son does scare me.


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## ocotillo (Oct 17, 2011)

RandomDude said:


> Still, I started hearing about "spatial awareness" and how women have less. I found this:
> 
> Is this true?


Professions that require exceptionally high aptitudes in spatial skills are still dominated by men. (e.g. Architects, Engineers, Surveyors, CAD/CAM, etc.) 

There is a growing body of evidence that those skills are learned very early in life though.


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## SimplyAmorous (Nov 25, 2009)

Myself & husband are both very good drivers.. never caused an accident yet that was our fault.... but he parallel parks far better than me! I will park a block or 2 away to avoid that.. (Oh I take that back.. I wrecked his car on the way to my drivers Test when I was 17...snow covered hill we were on)

I am more of the lead foot between us.... he worries about me .. I guess I was tail gating one of his co-workers today out & about.. he comes home & tells me I was riding his tail.. said I need a bumper sticker asking how my driving is with a 1-800 #.... I was busted.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

We are beginning to talk different things - spatial awareness is nice to have in driving bit driving is much more about practice and experience rather than the innate ability to deal with space.

You could take my daughter - unquestionable spatial awareness as a designer (magna cum laude :lol yet inexperienced in snow driving. All the spatial ability in the world can't compensate for lack of experience.


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## DistortedImage (Aug 4, 2013)

_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## askari (Jun 21, 2012)

There are different types of spatial awareness I think. Whilst I think I am a better driver than my wife (no, not because I am a sexist male but because I had police training!) I do think she is just as good a driver as any 'normal' male driver.

Some months ago we were driving somewhere in the middle of nowhere, came ove the crest of a hill and could see the long straight road for about 2 miles. There is the middle of the road in the distance was a helicopter. I said 'wow! I wonder what has happened'....her 'what? where?'....

Looking ahead she could not see what was different about the 'vista'. Go to an airport and you expect to see aircraft etc not a ship.
Go to a hospital Emergency dept and you expect to see nurses etc not car mechanics!

My wife couldn't see that a helicopter 'parked' on the road was out of place.

She is useless at that type of spatial awareness.


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## Forest (Mar 29, 2014)

You have to decide if "safer" actually means "better". Women may be a safer risk for insurance company because they drive fewer miles, drive less at night, are less likely to drive drunk, drag race, or drive high performance cars. They are also less likely to drive professionally, drive larger vehicles, or drive under hazardous conditions.

If skill is the end goal, you'd have to look at who can actually take a vehicle thru challenging tasks successfully. Can you back a trailer, reverse thru obstacles, brake without sliding, etc?

You'd also think that "better" drivers would likely dominate in auto racing, right?


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## askari (Jun 21, 2012)

"safer" v "better"....

I think that on the whole, because men tend to be more into driving and mannerisms of the car, that 4 wheel drive (eg Audi Quattro) will give you better grip when cornering, that putting your foot down while cornering in a rear wheel drive car will flip your back end out etc....that they are probably better, but not necessarily safer drivers.

We mustn't forget that 30mph can be just as dangerous as 100mph.


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## RandomDude (Dec 18, 2010)

Lol @ some of the responses

Still not sure what to make of it, like ok, there's the occupational element in it. Still, several of the women I've dated were professionals and had to park/find parking/squeeze into gaps in their daily lives. Whenever they drove they still hated it, needed me to step out and look, and told me they aren't confident in it. 

While for me, I can spot a parking spot very fast and squeeze in just about anywhere no problems! So can my mates (male) so the ladies seem to get me to drive all the time.

Now I'm not saying we should start putting up signs in parking lots: "FEMALE DRIVERS, PLEASE ALLOW A MAN TO PARK YOUR VEHICLE" (lol)... just saying, if this is a genuine difference between men and women it should be joked about, and celebrated. It's not about inferior/superior, it's just about male and female.


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## Lon (Jun 6, 2011)

Faithful Wife said:


> And.....all of that boils down to.....women are better drivers.


Women are better drivers because they are more fearful of adverse driving conditions?


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## Lon (Jun 6, 2011)

Justinian said:


> My opinion on this is that it has less to do with gender and more to do with occupations. I think that men tend to work at jobs that require "spatial awareness" more than women (I have no data to prove that). Men who work in construction can usually walk into a room and guess any dimension within less than an inch. Women who do the same work can do the same thing, there are just fewer of them.
> 
> My working years were spent in the automotive industry. It was typical for me to drive many different cars every day, and under many different circumstances, including crowded lots and very tight parking spaces. I can now park almost any sized vehicle in any sized space without even thinking about it. Not because I'm a man, but because of my past experience.
> 
> It has been 50 years since my last traffic citation, and in 53 total years of driving I have never had an accident, not a single scratch on a fender. I think I could easily be classified as a better than average driver. Again, that has less to do with my gender and more to do with my occupational experience.


Yep, regardless of if you have spatial aptitude or not, if you practice enough you can become proficient at just about anything.

As for driving skills and behaviors, only a few aspects of operating a vehicle depends on higher level spatial awareness.


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## MEM2020 (Aug 23, 2009)

John,
This is a pretty good topic. 

It allows us to distinguish between driving 'skill' which is based on numerous factors including spatial relations and driving 'safety' which includes other factors such as risk profile and average miles driven per year. 

From a practical standpoint, mixing drug/alcohol use with driving offers a quantitative measure of the difference between male and female risk profiles. 

For the year 2012, in fatal crashes: 
- 38% of the males driving were legally drunk
- 20% of females were

And for a key demographic - ages 20-34 I was surprised to learn than men drive almost exactly 50% more miles per year. 

Those are major factors. 

The insurance cost per mile driven could be lower for a man in this demographic and yet his premium could be 40% higher. 

And then once you factor in 'high risk' behavior such as drinking....





john117 said:


> They're more careful drivers - a mom with a minivan full of kids and all that - but not safer or better. The mom will wisely stay home in a snow storm or send hubby to Costco but the pizza delivery 20 year old has to be out there.
> 
> Also men work driving jobs at FAR higher rates than women and that skews the numbers. Ten to one for big Class 8 rigs, and not much better for local deliveries, etc.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

And now you know why insurance companies would love nothing but institute usage based premiums... Not only by distance but by area etcetera. Bad idea for drivers.


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## Lon (Jun 6, 2011)

john117 said:


> And now you know why insurance companies would love nothing but institute usage based premiums... Not only by distance but by area etcetera. Bad idea for drivers.


If insurance companies managed risk perfectly, and tailored their premiums to the risk profile exactly (e.g. you are exactly 4.2 times more likely than the average rate of 0.7 accidents per 100,000kms, to cause an accident, 99 times out of 100, therefore your premium is 4.2x higher than the $985/yr average), then there would no longer be ANY point to having insurance other than donating to their administration. If they knew exactly what damage you were going to cause then you are still going to pay exactly the costs plus the overhead so the insurance company stays in business.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

It requires a serious dose of self restraint to not go into lecture mode here and bore everyone to tears 

When we design the UX (user experience) for a product we have to consider such things as spatial reasoning and not overdo it. Let's say you design an equalizer for your home receiver. You can get creative and design a Star Trek style experience or just draw a box with the 5.1 or 7.1 speakers and allow the user to manipulate those. Select area (front/rear), then speaker to control, then adjust. Simple. You have to balance good design with good functionality. 

The fail of a Star Trek design is that it may rely too much on the user "getting" the underlaying 3D metaphor to work the gadget successfully. You may see it in a high performance car dash (Nissan Skyline GTR hired Nintendo - no kidding) but not in your living room or vehicle any time soon.

For example, look at a stove controls. 4 elements, 4 knobs. Nothing to it. Imagine a 2 level stove. Can your brain make the connection? You don't want 8 knobs but you have to add a button to signify level. Fun stuff, a buddy of mine does that for a living for GE Appliances.


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## CantePe (Oct 5, 2011)

I'm a freaking maniac driver who can parallel park better than a seasoned veteran semi truck driver.

I guess it depends on what you are doing?

ETA: oh and ironically can't back up for my life but the husband can drive backwards at 70/kms hour in a perfectly straight line for hours... (He is a truck driver by trade)


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## Deejo (May 20, 2008)

Faithful Wife said:


> And.....all of that boils down to.....women are better drivers.


Sounds like the equivalent of men are better cooks because there are more men chefs.

Which of course is true. On both counts.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

I would not be worried as much about gender differences as I would be about cultural differences. 

A few years ago we designed and ran a series of UX experiments involving simulated real time spatial manipulation and multitasking and culture trounced gender in terms of speed and accuracy. 

Unfortunately not the kind of research you publish  but quite funny. Of course a lot of it is sample selection - the non native culture people are not as likely to be as athletic / outdoors types as the locals so... 

Or as my Bay Area friends call it, DWI - driving while international 

(Note - I am an international so...)


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## Jetranger (May 31, 2013)

British readers might recall the 'Giles' strip that ran in the Express for many years.

One showed a wife standing in the driveway, pointing at the car which she has just wrecked by driving (clearly at great speed) into gate at the end of the driveway.

The husband is leaning out the window, saying: "I did everything possible to prevent you having an accident - I told you not to take the car."


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## Runs like Dog (Feb 25, 2011)

the stoners on the stoner thread will no doubt insist it makes them better drivers.


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## richardsharpe (Jul 8, 2014)

Good evening
You would have to define "better" driver for this question to make sense? Is it number of accidents? Average driving time to destination? Comfort of passengers? Winning on a racetrack?

Then you would need to decide what biases to correct for: Number of hours of driving? Training? Type of car? etc.

Social questions like this are difficult to answer clearly, and generally not worth the effort of doing so.


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## Runs like Dog (Feb 25, 2011)

Some people cause accidents w/o being in accidents themselves.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

Lecture time 

Spatial awareness is two, maybe three different things here - one is the ability to perceive space and moving objects in space in relationship to other objects. Someone who grew up playing video games will be ahead of someone playing Barbie or reading Harry Potter all things equal.

Another is the use of this enhanced spatial awareness in decision making. Car A merging on I-75 while Truck B is on his lane. Not only you have to perceive the objects involved but you have to decide - your brain has to think moving stuff. If you've ever seen a dog track a treat or frisbee... Or an immortal teenager floor his Mustang...

Ability three is the ability to use large and small motor movements to do whatever was decided in the previous two actions. Think the exact spot you have to hit a billiard ball to get the right English on it. Depends a lot on the first two of course.


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## Satya (Jun 22, 2012)

john117 said:


> Another is the use of this enhanced spatial awareness in decision making. Car A merging on I-75 while Truck B is on his lane. Not only you have to perceive the objects involved but you have to decide - your brain has to think moving stuff. If you've ever seen a dog track a treat or frisbee... Or an immortal teenager floor his Mustang....


This I actually believe I do rather well. My decision making in traffic /higher speed scenarios leaves almost no room for meandering. I've been in many hairy situations considering my short amount of driving experience, which is a mere 2.5 years. It's more about where I drive and the notoriously bad rep of drivers in my area. 

I kid you not, once a person merging onto a busy Highway flung a pizza box from the drivers side window at me (next lane over). And a half eaten pizza launched from the box as the air resistance forced it open. Now, this all happened in a fraction of a second, so I actually had no idea what that thing was at first, and it was going to hit the hood if I kept at current position & speed. 

Luckily, my (woman?) instinct of safety has me trained to perpetually scan around me and check my mirrors, and I'd done so just before this object (which became two) was hurled, on a collision course. I knew there was a car passing to my immediate left, and there was another to my right in my blind spot (behind Mr pizza man car). There was no one behind me, so in the split second I tapped my breaks enough to learn it was a pizza box with half eaten pizza pie flying out, and watched them splat on the road in front of me. I instantly knew it would be a squishy combination of cardboard, mozzarella, and tomato sauce, and proceeded to run it over with satisfaction and relief knowing it wouldn't pop a tire. 

I attribute my reaction that day to years of gaming (~4 years sober). I chased Mr doesnt-like-old-pizza and reported his plate to the local police. It took great restraint not to laugh into the phone as I described the incident, and apologised for sounding at all like a prank call. I told him the exact exit where he could find the unfortunate victim,if he wanted proof.


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## OnTheFly (Mar 12, 2015)

https://patriactionary.wordpress.co...creates-extra-large-parking-spaces-for-women/

I guess Asians have noticed this trend also, haha


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

Well, parking ability is more a function of how well you know the car rather than driver skill. Parallel park is more about how often you do it. 

I drove my beloved Saab 900 SPG for 20+ years. It was not a small car and yet I never parked it improperly. In 2012 I switched to a Mini Cooper, which is deceivingly wider than people think. I'm still learning to park it 3 years later.


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## RandomDude (Dec 18, 2010)

OnTheFly said:


> https://patriactionary.wordpress.co...creates-extra-large-parking-spaces-for-women/
> 
> I guess Asians have noticed this trend also, haha


LOL! Ahahahah :rofl:

Posting the pic for folks to see:









CLASSIC!


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