I know there are lots of men reading this who might shrink into an embryonic position or frown, cringing till the eyeballs drop out. Some might even crawl under the table, but they probably need to go home because they have had one too many.
Over-reaction aside, yes, there is common knowledge that women are bad drivers. I have long disputed that, because, to be honest, I feel safer when a gal is behind the wheel than men, who tend to be a lot more reckless. Especially in our country, most of them have seen Formula One, aspire to be one, and end up treating their vehicles like their bitches, ultimately enriching many mechanics.
I like being driven by a gal (in a car, that is). The gal would also feel safer because I am not going to be funny with her, or we will end up being scraped from the mangled metal pieces later.
But is it actually the reality that women are terrible drivers? I first realised the existence of this preconception from one of my favourite authors, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, in the Thunderball novel. Thankfully, that passage is available online, which I reproduce here.
“Women are often meticulous and safe drivers, but they are very seldom first-class. In general, Bond regarded them as a mild hazard, and he always gave them plenty of road and was ready for the unpredictable. Four women in a car he regarded as the highest potential danger, and two women nearly as lethal. Women together cannot keep silent in a car, and when women talk, they have to look into each other’s faces. An exchange of words is not enough. They have to see the other person’s expression, perhaps to read behind the others’ words or analyse the reaction to their own. So two women in the front seat of a car constantly distract each other’s attention from the road ahead, and four women are more than doubly dangerous, for the driver not only has to hear and see what her companion is saying but also, for women are like that, what the two behind are talking about.”
Well, I leave it to you to judge. But Fleming is old-school. His Bond sleeps with women, including others’ wives (just like Fleming himself, as I read this memoir written by his colleague, where they both shamelessly wrote about the romps with wives of some VIPs). Misogynistic as Fleming and Bond were, they were products of their time.
Time has changed since then. Heck, a lot has changed too, like my hairline. It is too obvious that men are the most reckless of the two. Take this article, for instance:
“Compared with women, male drivers of cars and vans had twice the rate of fatal accidents per mile driven. Male truck drivers had about four times the rate of women truckers, and men driving motorcycles had almost 12 times the rate of women motorcyclists. For bus drivers and bicycle riders, there was little difference between the sexes.”
As a matter of fact, very recently, the French government—of all folks—actually encouraged men to drive like women to reduce traffic deaths. “Drawing on data from France's National Interministerial Road Safety Observatory 2022-2023, the campaign noted that 84% of fatal accidents are caused by men,” that article noted.
In fact, in terms of death on the road, the difference between men and women is very apparent. In this research, it says that “despite women’s and children’s physical vulnerabilities during a crash, three times more men than women die in road crashes globally. Men die on the roads mainly as car drivers and motorcycle riders, while women are killed mainly as pedestrians and car passengers.”
See what I’m saying here? It mentioned motorcycles there. Let me not get into that. We all know that in our country, motorcycles are suicide machines that men grip between their thighs in many positions, manoeuvres, and moves until you see them climaxing by lying stiff on the road with newspaper covering their respective faces.
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