Women are actually better at parking than men, according to a new study carried out by NCP.

The NCP Parking Report assessed various aspects of parking, including speed, technique and accuracy, and established that out of a maximum score of 20, women drivers on average have a score of 13.4, while male drivers score on average only 12.3.

When it came to finding a parking space, only 64% of men drove at an appropriate speed, as compared to 92% of women. Seventy-seven percent of women adopted an appropriate 'pre-parking pose' (53% of men) and 39% of female drivers reversed into the parking space, compared to only 28% of male drivers.

More than half of all women drivers (56%) decided to shuffle the car forwards and backwards before they were happy with the position of the car. Only 29% of men did this, but only 25% of men actually achieved a central parking position, compared with 53% of women.

“Parking is our business, so we carried out the research to see how well people park their cars," said Jo Cooper, NCP Chief Executive. “As an interesting by-product of the research, we’ve also found out that there is a difference in parking skills between the sexes, although perhaps not in the way that most people expected.”