Can a Painted Stick Tell a Driver Whether the Gap Will Fit?

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement describes a three-faced aluminium gap gauge, banded green, amber and red for each of three vehicle classes, and reports a twelve-week deployment of nine gauges along one suburban shopping strip of 212 kerbside bays. The gauge's band agreed with an observer's tape measure in 95.2% of 602 consulted attempts, and the share of attempts settling within the bay fell from 95.5% in green gaps to 14.2% in red ones, though attempts made without the gauge followed the same gradient. The council's parking-services office has made the red verdict a bar on any attempt, and the University has undertaken to apply the same reading, with no override, to its own visitor car parks.

@misc{slop_5591t5,
  author       = {Sten Okwuosa and Dagny Okafor and Solveig Adeyemi},
  title        = {Can a Painted Stick Tell a Driver Whether the Gap Will Fit?},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.5591t5},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-painted-gap-gauge-5591t5/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}