While doing the mundane tasks of our daily lives, we hardly pay any attention as to how much time we spend on them. How’s driving and parking for example! Almost all of complain about the lack of proper parking space and etiquettes, but we would have hardly given a thought to the time spent on the very challenge of parking in a tight spot.
According to a UK survey, drivers spend nearly a year of their lives searching for a parking space. The poll, which included 900 participants, revealed that the average motorist loses the equivalent of more than six days a year circling streets and car parks looking for a spot. Based on the driving life of a driver, lasting around 50 years, the lost time in parking add up to 7,600 hours, or more than 45 weeks, the poll by parking company NCP found.
And Londoners are most stressed people when it comes to parking. Apparently they spend an average of 182 hours a year, or more than 54 weeks in a motoring lifetime, in the search for a parking space. This translates into a national average of 152 hours a year.
The next longest lost time on parking is endured by motorists in Birmingham, followed by and Newcastle. The survey also revealed that almost 42 per cent of people, and 51 per cent of women, they will not attempt to park in a space if another car is waiting behind them. Another quirky revelation made by the survey states that 23 per cent of drivers often get a passenger to do the parking for them.
Almost 44 per cent of people, and 48 per cent of women, have lost their cars being unable to remember the spot where they parked their vehicle. And guess what, Birmingham motorists beat the rest to be on the top of the list of most forgetful.
50 per cent of respondents said that they have gone to the wrong floor or section of the car park to look for their vehicle, while 39 per cent of those have even attempted to get into someone else’s car, mistaking it for their own.
NCP car parks chief operating officer Jo Cooper said: “Parking should be simple but in reality it is a stressful experience for most of us. There’s often a lot of pressure on us from other passengers, people waiting behind you, and then there’s the added time pressure too. It is bad enough we’re spending so much time sitting in traffic jams, commuting on busy motorways or taking the children to school. Parking should be the easiest part.“
The parking situation is no different in the Indian context, if at all we can assume that the parking situation is worse in India. Wonder what we would find out if they did a survey like this in India.
