Woman and Cars.......

[Akitu]

I think one of the reasons women got a bad reputation as driver is how they were trained. Before driver training in schools, most women were trained either by their father or their husband. Neither of those two individuals were qualified driving instructors. Both of them could be to cautious to properly train in how to handle truely difficult tasks starting and stopping, driving in heavy traffic, and parallel parking. Most of the time was spent driving in circles in an empty parking lot.

I concur with this reasoning, something that is shared by both sexes is a startling ignorance to wheel location or spatial awareness. They have no idea what is going on around them, only tunnel visioned on the path straight ahead, else they wonder why they hit every pot hole even though there's a large enough gap to safely move the vehicle around it and still stay in their own lane.

Not too sure about all you fancy techs driving your paved roads, but up here in the sticks dodging pot holes and washboarded sections of the road starts off as a game but becomes an art form over time. My new tech partner up here is amazed at how well I can shuffle a cargo van around and avoid almost every single road hazard in my way while it still mystifies him and he has a better track record of hitting them all than avoiding them.

If anyone's watched the show "Canada's Worst Driver", there's a lot of stuff in there that really should be taught to everyone in order to qualify for a license. Trailers for example - any idiot with a license can hook up a trailer to a vehicle with a ball hitch and do whatever they want with no penalization. I leave the show as its own selling point in reference to the point I was attempting to make here, if you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it.

On the topic of the immediately above, the last season (I believe, I could be wrong, maybe second last) featured a guy who was missing an eye and not compensating with head movement at all in order to check blind spots, he panicked excessively, didn't pay attention to any of the lessons given, and got nothing but mixed reviews from his large male lover, one minute he was doing great, and the next he was screaming for his very life. The host recommended he not drive but they can't legally keep his license, though they did go through the effort of notifying local police to keep an extra eye on him - pun was mine and fully intended.

[emujo]

Just like the majority of you fine folks that frequent this site, I drive in excess of 25K mile per year. My continued employment is mostly based on my ability to repair these MFPs, but another smaller percentage is based on my ability to get to the MFP, so I drive safe, really safe, and I've been this way for 20+years. I tried to impart some of these habits to my daughter when she started driving last year. After 1 year with a permit and no incidents, we allowed her to get her license and a late model Civic. I went out to dinner with her a few weeks ago and she scared the hell out of me, nothing I tried to teach her stuck, she's driving no less than 10 mph above the posted speed on wet roads, taking too much time to slow down at intersections, and excessive acceleration. She doesn't periodically check her mirrors or glance at the dash board to verify her speed. I do know she doesn't use her phone while driving ( I asked a friend of hers to call while I knew she was on the road) so that's a plus. BTW my wife drives pretty close to the way I do, except she will drive off a bridge to keep from hitting a squirrel, so I know women can drive safe. I guess it takes a 100% insurance rate hike to get the point across. Emujo