The world of motoring is reeling with stereotypes. Men drive too fast and need to be told to slow down by a sexpot. While women are bad drivers who apparently need bigger parking spaces.
The German town of Triberg is putting the law where its mouth is, designating parking spots by gender. Seriously.
The new spaces are similarly designated as handicapped spots. Women get the easy ones, while men are "steered toward the tighter, less convenient spots, with pillars and tight corners," which are more difficult to manoeuvre.
“As a rule,” Mayor Gallus Strobel told a local German paper, translated by an article in Euronews, “men are a little better at such challenges.”
Strobel acknowledges the gesture is a shameless publicity stunt, aimed at courting tourists.
The irony? A study that surveilled 700 British parking lots for a month found that, though it took women longer to park, they actually did a more accurate job of it. So there, Strobel. The women of Triberg can bear that factoid in mind with all the extra time they clock dashing in and out of their easy spaces in town.
Fun or fundamentally wrong?
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