Opinion

Anita Robinson: Women drivers may be more careful than men but they are not entirely free from fault

Women indicate their intentions at the last minute or not at all, because they’ve suddenly spotted a parking space 
Women indicate their intentions at the last minute or not at all, because they’ve suddenly spotted a parking space  Women indicate their intentions at the last minute or not at all, because they’ve suddenly spotted a parking space 

Confused.com, bless them, conducted a survey and discovered that women are better drivers than men.

Women have fewer accidents because they’re rarely into speed, road-rage, risk-taking or macho posturing. They don’t tail a fellow who cut them up at the traffic lights for three miles to his home and eat him on the doorstep – though I know a woman who did.

Many women, frequently none too sure how a car works and no interest in finding out, treat a car cautiously, like a leopard on a leash and infuriate men by their hyper-caution on the road. But they’re not entirely free of fault.

Here are a few of the driving sins SOME women commit, based on personal observation. There are seven of them, none particularly deadly, unless you happen to be the motorist directly behind.

1. Women position their rear-view mirrors exclusively to check their hair. The wing mirrors they rarely use at all.

2. Women think because they have wee short legs, they need the seat and their noses up against the windscreen, so they’re constantly stamping on the pedals as if they’re killing cockroaches, which leads to a staccato style of progress.

3. Some women cannot descend from fifth to fourth gear without overshooting and engaging second, which accounts for the kangaroo lep of the little Corsa in front and everybody behind having to brake suddenly.

4. Women pull on the handbrake with as much force as would uproot a well-grown sapling, just to make sure the car won’t roll away. Then they have to get a man to disengage it for them.

5. Women indicate their intentions at the last minute or not at all, because they’ve suddenly spotted a parking space. While indicating left, they may suddenly veer right, having seen a bigger space opposite.

6. Women who’ve imperfectly mastered the skill of reversing into a space usually have to take three goes at it. The greater number drive in forwards, leaving the car’s rear end sticking out. Most women do this if their husbands aren’t with them.

7. Women drive with their engagement hand at twelve o’clock so the sun sparkles on their ring. This is not a good position for optimum control of the car. Women with lots of jewellery drive with both hands at noon.

All women drivers develop specialist skills. The mother with fractious children in the backseat steers with the right arm while the left flails behind her like a windscreen wiper, clouting them into submission.

You’d think a woman alone in a car would be the safest option, but then a woman’s rarely alone in a car. In the absence of family, friends or other freight, she has that lethal accessory, her handbag – usually big, heavy and like sedimentary rocks, its contents are laid down in layers. Whatever a woman’s looking for is, invariably, at the bottom and in order to retrieve it, she needs to go in head first and oxter-deep with a miner’s lamp. This she cannot do while driving a ton or so of shiny metal. With one hand on the steering wheel, she’ll paddle with the other in the depths of her bag – fingers sifting, identifying and relinquishing each item back into oblivion when it proves to be not what she’s looking for. And she’s always looking for something small – a pen, a lipstick, an earring, a safety pin.

Here is a traffic warning – a woman feverishly dredging for the last remaining two squares of fruit and nut chocolate is the single most dangerous unrecorded hazard on the road.

I could go on in this vein ad infinitum and never get to what women do when they stop the car – suddenly opening the door into the stream of traffic without looking, then leaving their backsides out in the middle of the road, leaning inside for ten minutes gathering up their belongings while the traffic builds up behind them – but I feel I have delighted you long enough.

I’ll go along with the decision of Confused.com that women drivers are better than men. It just puzzles me how they ever came to such a conclusion.