The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a new study that looked at the differences between men and women finding their parked car in a parking lot. The study focused on a 115 shoppers (age 19-85) at a mall in the Netherlands.

According to the WSJ and the research article Losing Your Car in the Parking Lot: Spatial Memory in the Real World, men more often took the most direct route back to their vehicle and outperformed women in estimating the distance to the parked car.  Women, on the other hand, used more landmarks. Overall, the study participants were fairly good in finding their car with only 14% making a substantial detour, most of them women.

Perhaps those that are spatially challenged should download this iOS app or purchase this device, especially if you have parked at the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta which holds the Guinness World Record for having the largest parking lot in the world with 20,000 spaces (with an additional 10,000 spaces in an adjoining overflow lot).