A study by Škoda UK has revealed how stressful paying for parking is for drivers, with 40% finding it as stress-inducing as being late for work.

With so many different parking payment methods used across the UK – from ticket machines to apps – 20% of drivers compared it to having an argument, 16% said it was stressful as opening a bill and 9% as bad as going to the dentist.

Almost half (47%) of motorists have given up paying for parking altogether because the process was too difficult, while 18% have said they’d spent more than 10 minutes trying to pay for a space. In addition, 33% have failed to pay for parking at least once, and later received a fine as a result.

The British public’s least favourite payment method is an automated phone call (38%), followed by a parking app (26%) and then a ticket machine (18%), according to the research.

Škoda is aiming to make the public’s parking woes less troublesome, as it trials a new and innovative service to ease parking pain. Pay to Park enables cashless payments for parking directly via the Škoda infotainment system.

The Pay to Park service automatically identifies the car park or parking zone you’ve entered using the car’s navigation and handles payments automatically. This leaves the driver without the trip-to-the-dentist-rivalling anxiety levels, while sessions can be extended using the MyŠkoda app.

Pay to Park is currently being trialled in Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, and will soon be available in the Czech Republic, Spain, France, Netherlands, Slovenia, Hungary, with plans for the system to be trialled in the UK in the future.