Saturday Evening Post: A walk in the park-ing lot: scientists prove that you are wasting your time w

Anything you do daily deserves thought. Unfortunately, habits are seductive precisely because you don't have to think about them. Which is why familiarity does not always lead to understanding or insight.

Consider the lowly parking lot. A person receiving a driver's license today could foreseeably drive another 20,000 days (until about age 71 if they start driving at 16). If such a person averaged one daily stop in a large parking lot, they would need to locate 20,000 parking spaces during their lifetime.

Most motorists follow one of two basic parking strategies. They either park next to the first parked car they encounter, or they gamble, pressing on in hopes of finding a closer (as yet unseen) space.

Scientists have rigorously tested these two strategies. They found that people who gamble on finding "up-front" parking waste time more often than they save time. The consequences are not as trivial as you may think.

If new drivers were taught to always park next to the first parked car they encounter in a selected row, over a lifetime (using my example) they would save 83 hours of driving around.

A "one-lot-per-day" driver who uses the non-gambling strategy over a lifetime would also:

1. be less likely to hit a pedestrian or another car, and incur higher insurance costs;

2. get into fewer arguments with other motorists over parking spaces;

3. accumulate fewer door dents;

4. use less gasoline (approx. 5 fewer tanks over a lifetime);

5. drive about 1,650 fewer miles;

6. pollute the air less;

7. feel less stress (by not experiencing frequent loser's remorse);

8. get more exercise (as will their passenger(s);

9. walk about 216 additional miles, burning approximately 21,600 calories;

10. get from their car to the front door, and back to their car, 53 hours faster (assuming a walking pace of just 5 feet per second);

11. feel smarter.

The last point is true only to the degree that a non-gambling driver knows that he or she is pursuing the optimal strategy. So, if you want to verify my assertions (or if a gambler wants to bet), ask your local librarian to locate the following study:

"A Probabilistic Approach To Evaluate Strategies For Selecting a Parking Space," by C. Richard Cassady, and John E. Kobza, Transportation Science, Vol. 32, No. 1, February 1998.

This study concluded that the non-gambling parking strategy will save you, on average, 14.87 seconds of driving around per parking cycle. In addition, a non-gambler who parks quickly and begins walking can get to the front door and back to their car an average of 9.7 seconds faster than the gamblers. The gamblers eventually do, on average, park closer to the front door, but they gain only weight for their effort.

There are about 200 million drivers in America. If the personal and societal benefits of following the non-gambling parking strategy were routinely covered on state driver's license exams, much good, and nothing bad, would occur.

I mention that "nothing bad would occur" because many reform efforts do have unforeseen consequences. For example, if large numbers of lottery ticket buyers were similarly convinced to cease their gambling, their respective state legislatures would have to convene emergency sessions to raise taxes!