There has just been an item on the morning news about how good at parking men and women are and which ones are better. It may be entertaining, but is also so inane that I can’t remember which sex was supposed to be better. Lets suppose men were worse at parking than women. Why? Perhaps because they drive more than women, or perhaps they have a tendency to drive bigger cars than women. Who knows ?
Personally I believe whatever the reason for someone being a bad parker, it is very unlikely to be because they are a man or a woman. Whilst such surveys are entertaining and provide a bit of ‘water cooler’ discussion material, all too many people jump to the obvious conclusion. All such a survey shows is that men have a statistically significantly greater chance of having an accident parking than women (or the other way around).
It does not show that men are worse at parking than women. That may be the case, but the survey doesn’t show it … because it doesn’t answer other questions :-
- Do people who drive more than an hour a day have more or less accidents parking than those who drive less than an hour ? Repeat for other time periods.
- Do people who drive larger cars have more accidents parking than those who drive smaller cars ?
- Does parking in deprived areas result in more or less parking accidents ?
- Does street parking result in more of less parking accidents than in car parks ?
The list goes on, and then you have to discover the differences between how men and women park.
We are too quick to jump on apparent evidence that shows men are better than women, or women are better than men. In reality, if you pick a woman driver and a man at random, there are probably many differences between them that could explain different driving risks, and that the difference in sex is probably the least likely explanation of differences in the risk of driving accidents.