Parking, Car Parking

Synonyms / Other Terms Used

Parking Lot, Car Park, Parking Space

Category

Regulations, Road Signs, Transportation, Transport Facilities

Message / Function

To indicate the location of car parking facilities

	Source	Description
	UN 1968	Sans serif capital letter "P" on blue background
	AIGA	Sans serif capital letter "P"
	UIC 413	Sans serif capital letter "P"
	ÖNORM A 3011	Sans serif capital letter "P"
	Tern	Sans serif capital letter "P"
	O'72	Sans serif capital letter "P"
	Eco-Mo Foundation	Sans serif capital letter "P" inside circle
1)	TC	Sans serif capital letter "P" inside circle
	NPS	Capital letter "P" with serifes
	WO'72	Sans serif capital letter "P" with side view of car inside
	ISO 7001	Sans serif capital letter "P" with front view of car
	Icograda	Sans serif capital letter "P" with partial front view of car
	BS 8501:2002	Sans serif capital letter "P" with side view of car
2)	S/TA	Sans serif capital letter "P" with side view of car
	O'72	Sans serif capital letter "P" plus numbers on the right
	Icograda	Front view of car on surface, letter "P" on pole with round sign
3)	Icograda	Two times two matrix arrangement of front views of a car
	Icograda	Arrangement of three cars in front view with horizontal line below, partial overlap
	Icograda	Perspective view of two parking spaces with cars in side view
	Icograda	Arrangement of three cars in side view with partial overlap
	Unknown	Arrangement of seven cars in side view with partial overlap
	W-JAP	Vertical bar, plan view of car on the right
	W-JAP	Vertical bar, on the right: plan view of car placed diagonally
	Unknown	Plan view of three parking lots with cars
	Unknown	Plan view of three parking lots with cars, parking at an angle of 60°
	Unknown	Front view of car with open door, person entering
	Vuković	Sans serif capital letter "P" combined with arrow as single element
	MBST	Sans serif capital letter "E"

Discussion

The collection shown above is only a small selection of the wide variety of pictograms and symbols used all over the world to indicate the location of car parking facilities. Due to the far-reaching implementation of Sign E, 14a, Parking, of the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, images showing a sans serif capital letter "P" also are quite present in the table above. Besides this solution other variants exist, reaching from pictorial designs to avoid the necessity of learning especially induced by language barriers, to other letter based concepts like the sans serif capital letter "E" in Brazil.

In Appropriateness Ranking Tests conducted in the context of the Icograda student project (Frascara) and the ISO test series 1979/80 (Easterby & Graydon, 1981 a) more than 30 graphic symbols for the referent Parking were tested. Especially the variants displaying the letter "P" in combination with a car were considered as most appropriate, followed by variations of the letter "P" inside different frames. The three pictogram variants marked with 1) to 3) then were examined in a Comprehension Tests conducted in six countries (Easterby & Graydon 1981 b). Variants with the letter "P" were understood better than the pictogram showing four nicely aligned cars in front view. Only 51.2 % of the responses could be classified as correct for the latter (marked 3) in the table above). In this study the variant from Seattle-Tacoma Airport labeled S/TA 2) performed best with 78.9 % correct responses. On basis of these results ISO/TC 145/SC 1 proposed to standardize the sans serif capital letter "P" in combination with a front view of car as standard image content for the referent Car Parking.

In a later Japanese study to propose domestically unified graphical symbols based on scientific methods, the pictogram variant labeled as Eco-Mo Foundation reached an excellent comprehension score of 97.1, an almost perfect value (Eco-Mo Foundation, 2001).

A sign almost identical to the UN 1968 traffic sign at the top of the table above was part of a study including a brief training of 100 road signs among U.S. drivers (Ward et al., 2004). In a comparison of comprehension scores from before and after the training, this road sign was among the best with 90 % correct answers before and 94 % after training. All participants - mostly students - had to have a valid drivers license.

Boateng (2016) studied several traffic signs concerning comprehensibility on basis of a multiple choice test in Ghana. In this study 99 % of the respondents selected the correct answer concerning a variant similar to the UN 1968 traffic sign. But no information is available concerning the distractors used. If these were not selected carefully, results with correct responses close to 100 % are to be expected, even if the symbol used is far from perfect. In the contrary Fiori (2008) reported only 64.9 % correct responses when presenting a combination of three map symbols: a front view of a car plus the letters E and P in his study conducted in Brazil.

Recommendations

Parking

Based on the test results known, we recommend the use of the sans serif capital letter "P" similar to the variant of the United Nations Convention on Road Signs and Signals or the symbol sign advocated by AIGA.

From our point of view Public Information Symbol PI TF 014 from ISO 7001 should be used only for parking facilities limited to cars, as showing a car may imply this limitation.

Tests of pictograms of referent Parking, Car Parking

Boateng, K.A., Atobra-Acheampong, H., Agyeman, N.P., Gyamfi, E.A. (2016): Comprehensibility of Road Traffic Signs Among Urban Drivers (Case Study; Sunyani Municipality, Ghana). International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology, 05, 1-7.

Easterby, R.S. & Graydon, I.R. (1981 a): Evaluation of Public Information Symbols: ISO Test: 1979/80 Series. Part I: Appropriateness Ranking Tests. AP Report 99, Applied Psychology Department, University of Aston in Birmingham, January 1981.

Easterby, R.S. & Graydon, I.R. (1981 b): Evaluation of Public Information Symbols: ISO 1979/80 Test Series. Part II: Comprehension/Recognition Tests. AP Report 100, Applied Psychology Department, University of Aston in Birmingham, January 1981.

Eco-Mo Foundation (2001): Test data of public information symbols in Japan - Procedure for the testing of public information symbols by the Study Committee. ISO: ISO/TC 145/SC 1 N 329.

Fiori, S. R. (2008): Mapas para o turismo e a interatividade - proposta teórica e prática. Tese de Doutorado - Depto. de Geografia, FFLCH-USP.

Ward, S., Wogalter, M., & Mercer, A. (2004): Comprehension and Training of International Road Signs. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. 48. 10.1177/154193120404801705