Parking and the visual perception of space

TL;DR

This paper reveals a surprising similarity in the spacing patterns of parked cars and perching birds, attributing it to a shared perceptual mechanism and supporting it with a mathematical model and empirical data.

Contribution

It introduces a simple mathematical model explaining the common spacing patterns between parked cars and birds, based on shared distance estimation mechanisms.

Findings

Statistical properties of car spacings resemble those of bird perching distances.

A mathematical model successfully explains the observed spacing patterns.

Empirical data supports the proposed shared perceptual mechanism.

Abstract

Using measured data we demonstrate that there is an amazing correspondence among the statistical properties of spacings between parked cars and the distances between birds perching on a power line. We show that this observation is easily explained by the fact that birds and human use the same mechanism of distance estimation. We give a simple mathematical model of this phenomenon and prove its validity using measured data.