Tim Rayment
Go in the morning to your local railway station and you will see an amusing
little scene played out. Couples arrive by car, with the man driving. As he
gets out to catch his train, the woman walks around the car to drive home.
Men and women are different — and never more so than when driving. Now, thanks
to research by motoring organisations and universities, we can look behind
the stereotypes to see what the contrasts really are.
Take getting lost. British men waste 5.9m hours a year at their steering
wheels because pride makes them drive around pointlessly for 20 minutes
before asking directions. Women ask after 10. The research shows that men
will endure a 10-minute “nagging period” from their partners before giving
up and asking for help.
Or flirting. Half of male motorists admit being distracted by female
pedestrians, and insurers have noticed that as women shed clothing in
summer, minor claims go up. According to the AA, 2% of men have crashed
while ogling women. Only one in 10 women, on the other hand, spares a glance
for men — with no resulting accidents.
Or the law. Men who consider themselves not to be law-abiding drivers
outnumber the women who say this by nearly four to one. In court 88% of
those found guilty of motoring offences are men. Yet women have more
accidents . . .
These are the facts. But what lies behind the facts? Is a reluctance to ask
directions really pride? Or are women quicker to get help because they know
they are inferior navigators? To explore these questions, two gentle writers
went on a motoring holiday. I was the male driver and Ariel Leve the female.
Touring Scotland in a borrowed Mercedes convertible we surprised ourselves
by conforming to almost all the research.
I was looking forward to the trip. A fast car and an engaging passenger —
sorry, co-driver. What could be better? But when Ariel saw the convertible
(and after she had finished applying her makeup in the driving mirror), she
suddenly remembered that she gets car sick. Look, I said, think of the first
day’s journey as a chance to talk for eight hours. She brightened
immediately. I took the wheel.
Research this year for the RAC shows that 14% of men have driven more than 500
miles without a break, with the biggest risk-takers being men aged 35-64.
Only 6% of women have done so. The implications are obvious: 59% of men
admit to driving while drowsy, compared with 32% of women.
I’m not among them: I like breaks. We stopped at Westmorland services and when
we left I was still at the wheel. I didn’t offer to hand over and Ariel
didn’t ask. If I drove, which would be at the speed of business traffic
(above 70mph, below 100), seeing Scotland in daylight was more likely.
A man can get huge pleasure from driving a car along a motorway. There is the
hum of the engine, the satisfaction of imagining well-oiled parts moving up
and down, and in this case the marvel of Distronic — a radar-assisted cruise
control that is well worth the £1,310 it costs on the options list. Ariel
chatted happily.
That night I prepared a quiz for her. What is Distronic? Is our car petrol or
diesel? What is a kerbed alloy? What happens if you move your teddy bear out
of the way and press the DSC Off button? (As Ariel fiddled with her bear
from the passenger seat she had, indeed, turned off the traction control
without noticing.) I included the alloy question in the quiz twice, as this
was my anxiety: Ariel was likely to drive safely, but I really feared a
scraped wheel.
Women have more accidents than men. Men drive on motorways and trunk roads,
where accidents are least likely; women drive in town centres, where they
happen. When men crash, it’s more serious: 17% of male accidents, but only
10% of female mishaps, involve bends. Men have overtaking and
falling-off-the-road accidents; women have right-turn accidents. Figures are
not available for scraped alloys, but this was my fear.
The next day I drove again. But soon I felt self-conscious, and it was Ariel’s
turn.
The Mercedes was a pleasant surprise to her. It’s a powerful car, but with a
long accelerator travel and easy controls it does not feel it. “Oh, this car
is easy to drive,” said Ariel, and in two minutes we were travelling along a
rural Scottish road at 58mph.
I was nervous. This was more than the national speed limit in the United
States when Ariel learnt to drive 15 years ago. Was she giving herself time
to adjust to the car? I pointed out in a relaxed voice that she was
travelling at more than the old American speed limit. Did she need time to
get her “spatial awareness”? With hindsight the message was too subtle. I
should have said: “Slow down!” The spatial ability of women is not as good
as that of men, although it does vary with hormone levels. Men are at their
best when testosterone levels are down, which means their map-reading
suffers on autumn mornings when the hormone is at its peak. Women do best
during menstruation, when oestrogen levels are low. But that was not what I
was thinking about as Ariel drifted towards the verge, then failed to notice
the dirt from the edge of the road hitting the wheelarches.
I did not want to seem anxious, which might have hurt her confidence and made
me sound like a controlling man. But I wasn’t relaxed. “Don’t hit the kerb,”
I said. What? “Don’t hit the kerb.” Then a lorry came the other way and
Ariel instinctively moved left. I released all my anxiety with a shouted
warning, which made what happened next inevitable. We hit a concrete kerb at
50mph. Then we hit it again, scraping the wheels and tearing part of a tyre
off. Ariel had been driving for seven minutes and had travelled five miles.
When we stopped, she tried to repair the tyre, part of which was now
flapping against the bodywork, with her tweezers. At least it hadn’t burst.
Did my shouting cause her crash? Probably. Research shows that young men and
young women are worse drivers when they have a male passenger, whereas a
female passenger has no effect on standards for either sex.
By mutual consent that is where our experiment ended. I drove the rest, trying
to get pleasure from taking a racing line around bends at modest speeds so
that Ariel would not be sick — using the racing line for smoothness. After I
dropped her off at the railway station the next day, the 5.5 litre Mercedes
gave me one of the drives of my life, on the A701 across the Scottish
border. It was then, with no woman around and Wagner on the radio, that I
thoroughly enjoyed the car for the first time.
I missed Ariel and her teddy. But I have made a decision. I prefer driving
with another man — or alone. Just man and machine is best.
Page 2: Ariel's verion ()
Why I kerbed those alloys
Ariel Leve
Imagine you’re driving along a two-lane road in the middle of Scotland. You’re
American so it’s your first time driving on the wrong side of the road with
the wheel on the wrong side of the car. From the passenger seat comes your
companion’s voice. It is quiet, calm — albeit tense. “You’re doing fine,” He
says. You relax.
Seconds later he begins to talk about “special awareness”, whatever that may
be.
“Are you nervous?” you ask. His response is a firm No.
Later, in a heated debate about who is at fault for what happened next, you
will remind him of this response and he will admit that he was indeed
nervous, but lied. You’ll mention that had he said he was nervous, you would
have slowed down. You will use this to point out that he is just as
responsible as you are for what happened. He’ll disagree.
Men believe they are better at driving. There have been surveys done and
studies conducted that support this but you don’t need to consult the
internet for facts to back it up. It is a biological imperative: if a man is
in the passenger seat with a woman at the wheel, unless they are blind, they
are unhappy (and even if blind, I suspect they would still feel a sense of
superiority).
Having been present for the results of a hearing test with Tim Rayment on a
different assignment I know for a fact that his hearing is impaired. And
often, after I’ve spoken, he will claim not to have heard me. Yet despite
being unable to hear a voice less than 5ft away, he could miraculously
detect the faintest sound of mud hitting the outside of the car, as he did
on that road in Scotland. “You’re too near the kerb,” he warned. Only he
repeated it several times with increasing intensity. “Don’t hit the kerb!
Don’t hit the kerb!” I steered away but because there was also a speeding
lorry coming directly towards us, I veered back. So as I saw it, I saved our
lives. He didn’t see it that way.
“Now you’ve done it! You’ve hit the kerb!” He shouted. “Don’t hit it again!
Don’t . . . hit . . . it . . . yep you’ve done it again!” To better
understand the terrorising volume of this angry outburst, consider this was
a scream coming from a man who has not raised his voice in over a decade.
Ten years of repressed rage liberated all at once in a harrowing mandate to
not hit a kerb. With that kind of pressure, who wouldn’t hit it? I did what
anyone in that situation would do: burst into tears. Shaking, with tears
dropping onto the steering wheel, I pulled over. At which point Tim
immediately jumped out to survey the damage because, naturally, his first
concern was the car.
Here’s something I don’t understand. Take the most good-natured,
mild-mannered, soft-spoken man — put him in a car — and all of a sudden he’s
Saddam Hussein. The reality is that yes, I “kerbed the alloy” and lost a
little bit of control of the car. But what would have happened if Tim had
used a reasonable tone? He lost control of his temper, which scared me into
hitting the kerb. No good has ever come from shouting at a woman while she’s
driving.
Surveying the damage was like a scene out of CSI: Scotland. It was rainy,
damp, cold and grey and for several minutes Tim stood there, frowning,
examining the side of the car before pointing to the mud like a forensic
pathologist. “See that splatter?” he said. “Those tiny spots of mud indicate
ditch.”
After that one thing was clear. For the rest of the trip I’d be the one in the
passenger seat. I’d driven all of five miles.
With Tim in the driver’s seat, he began to confirm all the data I’d researched
about male drivers. Such as a blatant disregard for speed limits and
signposts. Also, that men are competitive; if there is another car on the
road they have to overtake it.
Tim is an eminently qualified driver, but going 95mph in the pouring rain on a
two-lane slippery road while overtaking a lorry isn’t my idea of a relaxing
drive.
The one time I was semi-relaxed was when he began talking about how
“interesting” bends were. Hearing about minimal movement of the steering
wheel and correct readings had a sedative effect. Of course, I couldn’t fall
asleep entirely because I was too nauseous from the curves.
I’d heard the west Highlands are known for their breathtaking scenery. I
wouldn’t know because most of the time I was there my hands were covering my
eyes. Every time we would approach a bend in the road I would panic as I
heard Tim accelerate. And therein lies the most significant gender-based
difference in our attitudes towards driving. For me, a relaxing drive is low
risk. I like to observe a body of water without envisioning dying in it.
