No study reviewed for this question examines the exact situation of a driver parking beside a lone car in an otherwise empty lot, so there is no proven explanation for it. The parking-choice studies that do exist cover related decisions: how drivers pick a space, how they search when availability is uncertain, and how they behave around a parked car when leaving. Those findings are useful for framing the plausible explanations, but they do not establish why any particular driver makes this choice.
What the studies establish
Three bodies of work come closest to the topic. Each one addresses a neighboring question, so each should be read with its limits in mind.
Stated-preference experiment on parking location under uncertainty (Chaniotakis and Pel, 2015)
This stated-preference experiment looked at how people choose where to park when they do not know whether spaces will be available and how long a search will take. The authors reported that searching once they arrived was the dominant strategy among those studied, and that the probability of finding an open space affected which location people chose. The study describes how drivers handle uncertainty about availability. It does not observe anyone choosing a bay next to a parked car.
Curb-parking choice in Beijing (2020)
A 2020 study of curb parking in Beijing modeled cruising and location choice. It found that drivers were more likely to pick curb spaces closer to their destination, and it treated adjacent locations as part of a sequence of parking decisions. Curb parking in a dense city is a constrained setting, so its results describe how a space is chosen under scarcity. They should not be carried over to a surface lot with plenty of open bays.
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Territorial behavior among departing drivers (Ruback and Juieng, 1997)
Ruback and Juieng ran three parking-lot studies on territorial behavior. Their abstract reports that departing drivers took longer to leave when another car was present, and longer again when an intruder honked. This concerns the driver who is pulling out, not the driver who arrives and parks. It shows that a nearby car can change how a driver behaves in the space, but it does not explain why someone chooses that space in the first place.
Plausible explanations, labeled as hypotheses
The sources do not test the following explanations for the exact scene in the title. They are reasonable everyday interpretations of how people park, and each should be treated as a hypothesis.
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The first acceptable space
A driver may stop at the first space that looks convenient and never check how many bays are still open. Searching studies suggest that many drivers decide quickly once they are in the lot, which makes the first acceptable space a likely stopping point. Nothing in the sources confirms that drivers in open lots actually work this way.
A parked car as a positioning reference
Some drivers may use a nearby vehicle as a visual reference when lining up, particularly in a wide lot with no painted cues or in an unfamiliar layout. A parked car is an easy landmark. The sources do not measure this in lots, so it remains a plausible mechanism rather than an established one.
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Walking distance and route
The curb-parking study found that drivers favor spaces close to their destination. A driver heading toward a particular entrance may pick the bay nearest that entrance, even when it happens to be beside another car. The evidence comes from a different setting, so applying it here is an inference.
The lot may not have been empty for long
The scene can change between arrival and the moment someone photographs or describes it. Other vehicles may have left, or the lot may have been busier earlier in the day. Without timing information, it is not possible to tell whether a driver was choosing among many open spaces.
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How strong is each explanation?
The table separates what the studies directly measured from what remains an inference.
| Explanation | Directly studied for an empty lot? | Closest evidence | Context of that evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| First acceptable space | Not stated for this scenario | Chaniotakis and Pel (2015): search upon arrival was dominant | Stated-preference experiment on availability uncertainty |
| Parked car as a positioning reference | Not stated | None identified | Plausible inference only |
| Walking distance and route | Not stated for open lots | 2020 Beijing curb-parking study: closer-to-destination spaces preferred | Constrained urban curb parking |
| Scene changed after arrival | Not stated | None identified | Plausible context only |
What this means if you are the driver who parked beside a lone car
The departing-driver study is the most practically relevant finding. It suggests that a nearby car can slow a driver down when leaving. Anyone who parks next to a lone car should expect that leaving may take a little longer. Choosing a space farther from others is a trade-off: it can mean a longer walk, which the curb-parking study suggests drivers weigh heavily.
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Why the premise needs care
The question assumes this happens often. None of the reviewed sources measures how common it is in open lots, so whether it is a frequent pattern cannot be confirmed. The behavior is real enough to be described, but the evidence supports only the general claims above.
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