Increasing Car Park Dings – Cars are Getting Bigger but Parking Spaces Aren’t

Twenty-two percent of people say they have resorted to climbing into their parked car via the boot on at least one occasion because the car parked next to them is so close.

Forty percent said they have to squeeze themselves into their car when parked next to another vehicle at least once a month.

Despite their car entry gymnastics, a third (30 percent) of drivers had their car damaged in a car park last year, with an average repair cost of £223.50. A third (37 percent) of respondents to the research undertaken by insurer Churchill admitted that the damage was still there, damaging the car’s future value and risking possible end-of-finance agreement costs.

Churchill estimated that damage caused by people having mishaps with tight parking spaces costs UK drivers £424m annually.

The challenge is straightforward: while cars are getting bigger, parking spaces are not. At the same time, from an agility point of view, the UK population is aging, and overall, we are getting larger.

The introduction of side impact protection technology is mainly behind the increase in car widths, with the average up from 168cm to 180cm. To provide some context, the most popular car on UK roads, the Ford Fiesta, which is classed as a ‘city car’, was 155cm wide when launched in 1976 and is now 174cm wide.

The British Parking Association’s recommendation is that parking spaces should be 240cm wide and 480cm long, as published in 2016. Theoretically, this would leave 33cm (around 1 foot) on either side of the modern Ford Fiesta.

The problem, according to Churchill, is that the size of most UK car park spaces is based on guidelines dating back to the 1970s. Add to this, those most recent size recommendations are eight years old, and the trend to ever wider cars has only increased over that period. Nearly a third (32 percent) of UK drivers say they now drive a bigger vehicle than five years ago.

Commenting on the findings, Nicholas Mantel, head of Churchill Motor Insurance, said:

“Widening cars combined with parking bays that haven’t been redesigned to accommodate today’s models means motorists all over the country are at risk of damaging their cars, through no fault of their own.”

Returning to find damage from a door being opened onto your vehicle is even more annoying due to the hassle and expense of getting dents and scratches repaired and the possible risk to future car insurance if a claim for the damage is made. It’s why many people are looking to specialist SMART insurance to help manage the costs of what is a genuine risk.