Here is the story:
A SHOPPING centre in China has opened a car park that offers women drivers bigger-than-normal parking spaces to accommodate what it sees as their special needs.
The Wanxiang Tiancheng centre in Shijiazhuang, about 400km southwest of Beijing, is laying out a women-only parking lot featuring extra-wide spaces.
The special lot to open next year will also be painted in bright colours, with cute cartoon characters and extra lighting and security.
The new design is prompted by insurance company data that showed female drivers "tend to cause twice as many collisions in parking lots than in other places", reports China's state-run Global Times.
"What a wonderful idea," shopper Sue McVay, 53, from Clontarf, said at Brisbane's Chermside shopping centre yesterday. "All the spaces are just so squashed so they should make them bigger for everyone."
Tony Brimble, 54, from Narangba, added: "I think they're trying to make the spaces too small, they're trying to cram more people in so they're making them too narrow."
His wife, Elizabeth, 40, labelled the Chinese theory behind women-only parking lots as "completely rude".
"The percentage of men who are going to shopping centres is less than the percentage of women, so the percentage of women having accidents is going to be more," she said.
Bridget Mellifont, 20, from Carseldine, who has been driving for two years, said she noticed no gender difference when it came to parking.
"I think females can park just as well as men," she said.
Figures from AAMI show claims from men and women were about equal, but women had more low-speed impacts.
University of Queensland psychology lecturer Courtney von Hippel said men had better spatial awareness skills which gave them an edge when it came to parking.