“A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else. ”

— George Savile

Let’s face it. Parallel parking isn’t the most enjoyable thing you can do with your car. According to a scientific research in 2009 led by Dr. Claudia Wolf from the Ruhr University in Germany, female drivers took an average of 20 seconds longer to park compared to their male counterparts, and yet were still less likely than men to park accurately. Well, that’s another story, but regardless of gender, I believe many drivers would still agree that parallel parking is indeed an ordeal that would require some degree of skill. Lol

Spending some time in Paris made me realize how such a skill is so vital for people who want to drive within the city, which probably explains why most people say that Parisians (and to some extent New Yorkers too) are world champions at the art of creative parking.

Seeing how close the cars in Paris are parked to each other makes you wonder how they even got there in the first place. Being millimeters apart I’m guessing either one of two things – Parisians have serious precision parking skills or they have perfected the art of bumper-car maneuvering. Lol

Truly amused, I managed to sneak some photos to illustrate the fascinating discovery.

If you're up for a few creative parking tips, try searching the web for "Parallel parking in Paris", and you'll find some rather entertaining videos to illustrate just that. Hehe.

http://www.videobash.com You really have to give this driver credit for pulling off a parking job like that. He's not going to waste time looking for a spot when he can just squeeze right in there!

I can’t help but feel so fortunate knowing that we as drivers don’t have to subject ourselves to such torment back home in Malaysia. For one, we have significantly more space within our “legal” slash dedicated parking slots; and for the other, it is not a norm for drivers to go around bumping into one another’s cars, and getting away with it so easily.

Sure, parking assist technologies like cameras and sensor systems can be quite reassuring, yet for the parking-impaired, nothing beats self-park cars (hint to the husbands). Soon, with autonomous vehicles, we wouldn’t even need a driving licence, but until then, when it comes to parallel parking, I’d say, practise makes perfect.