For men cars are fun, for women, just functional. Does it matter?
"What's the definition of a tree? Something that stands still for years and then jumps out on unsuspecting women drivers."
Women and their driving skills, or in some cases lack of such skills, have been the butt of many a joke for years. However, if you ask the insurers, women are less likely to have a serious accident, are cheaper to insure and are much quicker to shift their concentration to deal with an unexpected event. So in my view, that makes women safer drivers.
If you ask most men, my boyfriend included, men are definitely better drivers than women. In fact my boyfriend thinks he's a much better driver than me, but I think he drives like a madman. I really can't understand what's wrong with driving sedately without feeling like we're being chased everywhere we go. Then again, he's never had a crash, and I have. It was only a minor one, but apart from our personal opinions of each other's driving technique, it's the only actual event that separates our driving history.
Whenever we drive anywhere as a couple, I automatically get into the passenger seat and let him do the driving. It's not because I can't drive, because as I've already said, I can - and in fact I'm quite happy to drive myself to wherever I need to go and on long journeys we share the driving. But for some reason, on short journeys to the supermarket or round to a friend's house, I am happy to sit back and let him do the driving.
While I would hate to think I'm adhering to the stereotype that women don't drive, I am in fact just doing what I'm used to seeing done - leaving the driving to the men. My Mum did it, my Grandmother did it and my best friend does it. Come to think of it, I wonder if Frau Schumacher drives when family Schumacher goes on holiday? Somehow I can't imagine it, can you?
Maybe that's where the problem lies - a lack of role models. This is probably the point where I should hold my hands up and admit to not exactly being the world's greatest driving buff. Like most people I have been in the room when Top Gear has been on the television and if you asked me to name a racing driver, I could come up with several without rushing to my computer and starting a internet search. However, if you ask me to name a female racing driver, then I have to admit to falling at the first hurdle. Do women actually race? I hear myself ask. I thought they just looked pretty standing by their men once they've won the race and the champagne is flowing. I can't believe I've just said that.
Even worse, the only female name that does come into my head when I really put my thinking cap on is Jodie Kidd, and that's because I have a vague recollection of Jeremy Clarkson once saying how fast she had driven round the Top Gear racing course. I think most people would know her first and foremost as a model rather than a racing driver, although apparently she has now taken up racing.
So, this apparent lack of knowledge about my own sex, as well as a desire to prove that we are indeed just as worthy of a place on the road as all the male drivers out there led me eventually to the internet. Here, much to my surprise and joy, I came across a lady called Katherine Legge. Unfortunately, I was unable to get hold of Legge for this article, as having just made history by being the first female driver to drive an A1 Grand Prix car in Dubai, she was en route to America to continue honing her skills in the male-dominated world of motor racing. Earlier this year, Legge, born in Guilford in southern England, became the first woman in more than a decade to test a Formula One car.
In an interview with the UK Independent prior to her test drive in Dubai, Legge said it had always been her ambition to drive a Formula One car. That's not something you would expect to hear from most young girls, whom society still expects to play with dolls or enjoy cooking. Still, she's not the only one. While the last woman to compete in a mixed Formula One race was Giovanni Amati in 1992, 11 years later more than 10,000 women applied to be one of the 16 women chosen to race in the first all female World Formula One Championship.
"It's not that women can't drive racing cars," says Rosemary Smith, a former Irish international rally driver. "It's just that to them it's not the be all and end all. They are concerned with other things too. For male racing drivers, driving is all they think about."
Smith, who now runs a driving school in Dublin, doesn't believe the preconceptions about women drivers exist any more. "The idea that women are bad drivers is a thing of the past," she says. "Most young people see things as much more equal nowadays."
Of course Smith is right, but even amongst my friends, and I would consider myself to still be relatively young, the boys think us girls can't park or read maps and when we all go away together it's the boys that hire the cars and us girls that happily sit in the back nattering away without paying attention to where we're going.
Yet again though it's not because we can't do it, it's just that we can't be bothered with being preached at from the back seat if we do decide to drive. Apparently they have testosterone to thank for that and we, a lack of it.
But where I lay the blame is not at the door of some male or female hormone, but with the idea of preconceptions and stereotypes. While an internet search produces an abundance of jokes about women using the rear-view mirror to put their make up on while driving along the motorway, you have to hunt much harder to hear about those men who speed down the outside lane while shaving. Yes, I know they are clichés, but as you can see, they exist for both men and women.
So why is it that it's the assertions about woman that have stuck and that have led to an abundance of women-driver jokes and a dearth of famous female drivers.
Men and women view cars differently. For men, they are status symbols and a sign that you have cash - some may say an extension of their masculinity. For most women, a car is something they view as a necessity rather than something they really want to buy. Evidence of this can be seen all around. Small cars are described as the perfect run-around for the wife, while the larger, more refined models are seen as essential possessions for the hot-blooded male.
Moreover, there is an abundance of car magazines in the shops, but if you take a close look they are all orientated towards men. Women only feature as eye candy or in sections about which family car is best for you. And while Top Gear may be a programme aired on prime time television, that too is really aimed at men. If it wasn't then whey would it have stuck in my head that Jodie Kidd was a fast driver when every week they have a different celebrity guest and I could name very few of the others?
Still, as the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover, and therefore never judge a driver by their sex. I have plenty of female friends who are better, and in my eyes definitely safer drivers than their male counterparts and several that know more about the workings of a car than their opposite numbers. Then again, I know several girls, my sister being one of them, where when they give me a lift I end up gripping the sides of the passenger seat for dear life.
So it seems to me, it's not a question of which sex is the better driver, it's more a question of how you sell yourself as a driver. If I offered you a lift in my BMW Z3 and then drove like a snail stalling all the way to our destination would you say the same things about me behind my back as if I took you home in my clapped out old Fiesta overtaking everything in sight and boasting how we'd completed the journey in record time? Somehow I don't think you would.