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Women can't drive – or park

A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post


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I realise that the view I am about to expound might be seen as a trifle old-fashioned, but it’s time to face up to the truth. Women cannot drive. And they can’t park either.

Now I do hope my fellow gentlemen will forgive me if this comment has just resulted in their pizza and oven chips being splattered all over the wallpaper, but you really cannot get away from it.

The most dangerous place on earth to be sitting in a motor vehicle isn’t on the last lap at Silverstone with Michael Schumacher coming up behind you. It’s in Tesco’s car park between 9am and noon.

There the massed hordes of nerve-wracked and neurotic mothers, fresh from the horrors of the school run, career absentmindedly into one another, simultaneously fantasising about covering Mr Darcy in chocolate sauce while trying to remember whether or not the cat has had its injections. I tell you, you wouldn’t get me to drive round there in a Centurion tank.

And we’re not just talking music hall clichés here. It’s actually true.

Women really do use their mirrors to check their make-up. You can watch them at any traffic light in Bristol. That’s if they can see past the twelve air fresheners hanging from the windscreen. (Why do they do that? Why can’t they just throw away the old one before putting up the new one?)

Women drivers are also indecisive, they can’t read a road sign never mind a map, and they have difficulty in understanding lane discipline. They think those yellow boxes on the road are only there to make junctions look pretty and just because a traffic light says red, it doesn’t have to mean red.

And worst of all – much worst of all – they give their cars names, like Fifi or Mildred.

Now before you all start writing vituperative letters pointing out that women drivers are involved in fewer accidents, I know that already. What we don’t have reliable figures on is how many accidents women drivers actually cause. There is no doubt that men are the more aggressive drivers – that’s our job – but leave us to sort ourselves out and, apart from some foul language and the occasional beating with a jack handle, generally we get on fine. But when this fast-moving and efficient flow of male traffic comes across a blockage of the feminine kind, then havoc ensues.

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