If you've ever found that parking your car is getting harder, you're right. And the good news is that it's not your fault.
A new study has found that although cars are 16 per cent bigger than they were 20 years ago, the legal minimum size of a car parking space has not changed.
The problem is so bad that the average car is now two inches wider than the 5ft 11ins minimum width for parking spaces recommended by Whitehall.
At 6ft 1ins wide, one of Britain's most popular cars, the Ford Focus, is two inches wider than the minimum size recommended by the Government, while the Land Rover Freelander, one of Britain's widest cars, is more than 15 inches too wide to fit into the smallest space, measuring 7ft 2ins from mirror to mirror.
Not only is this massively inconvenient for motorists, making it tricky not only to park the car but to get out of it too, but it means that car owners are at an increasing risk of having their pride and joy scratched.
A study from Halfords and paint renovation experts G3 Pro has found that more than ten million drivers a year are returning to their cars to find them scratched. And with each repair costing around £50, it is estimated that this problem is costing motorists £500million a year.
Car doors are the most likely part of the car to be damaged, accounting for 50 per cent of scrapes, followed by bumpers (14 per cent) and wing mirrors (13 per cent).
The research also found that supermarket car parks are the worst, with 38 per cent of motorists saying that the spaces are too small, followed by shopping centres (29 per cent) and railway stations (18 per cent).
Donna Howard of G3 Pro said: "Even the smallest scratch can be very annoying and reduce the value of a vehicle by hundreds of pounds.
"But with car park operators looking to maximise visitor volumes and revenue, there is little incentive for them to exceed the recommended minimum size requirements."
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