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This page: Continuing the Introduction from this book aimed at the lady motorist

Motoring for Women.

Part 2 of the Introduction to this book on lady motorists.

Continued from Page 1 of the Introduction to this 80+ year old book ...

One of her sisters in this adventure is herself a good driver who rarely drives because she shares a car with her brother, and her brother is one of those unfortunates who suffers the tortures of the damned when he is being driven by anyone else; but she, being a noble and unselfish woman (she suffers precisely the same tortures herself), always travels as a passenger.

She knows a great deal about the road, and how you should behave on it. During the last lap of our tour she came to me, and, as I have said, made things quite plain about the woman driver, so far as her experience went. She said of the girl who drove the other car: "I can go sound asleep from the moment I get into her car until it is time to get out at the other end of the journey. I instinctively know that there will never be the slightest need for me to open an eye and wonder what is going to happen, or to wish that I were driving myself. That girl radiates confidence, and I cannot conceive any circumstances in which she could possibly have anything approaching 'cold feet.' "

She then explained to me a very little of what she suffers when she is being driven by her brother, who is now in the proud possession of his eighteenth car in fourteen years. She said: "Tom really drives quite decently, I know, but to tell you the truth, I am stiff with terror from the moment I get in to the moment I get out of the car. He knows it, poor lamb, and he does his best to broadcast confidence, but, somehow, I never seem to get his wave length. I have found that it is actually necessary for me to say from time to time: 'Tom, don't run over that nice Aberdeen terrier' because, to my horror, I have learnt that in nine cases out of ten, he hasn't even seen the Aberdeen terrier. Of course, we never run over the Aberdeen terrier, or any other kind of dog, or any human being, but that is only because Tom, who is an extremely good mechanic, and who really knows about motor cars, keeps our brakes in apple-pie order. If you only knew how exhausting it was," she went on, "to be continually trying not to say, 'Tom, this corner is absolutely blind; for the love of Mike sound your horn,' even when you know that the chances are that Tom will not sound his horn, you might be a little sorry for me."

That is a noble woman, because, in spite of what she suffers daily, she never says or does anything which could undermine Tom's self-confidence, and her self-control must have very nearly driven her mad. I did not require any more to assure me that here was woman who really understood the art of driving a motor car.

It would be absurd to deny there is a distressingly large number of women drivers today who make a mess of it, and by their ignorance add perceptibly to the dangers of crowded roads, but that is not at all to say that women are not to be allowed to drive, or that they necessarily make worse drivers than men.

To take a personal instance. I am generally very frightened indeed when I am driven by somebody else. I conceal my terrors as far as I am able, and endeavour to behave more or less decently in my panic; but, as a general rule, I detest it. Naturally, I have my exceptions, and there is a small list of drivers, men and women, in whose cars, as I have said just now, I can really go to sleep without a moment's hesitation. Well, in that list the women outnumber the men. One of the reasons for this is that in a real emergency the women on my list have never been within measurable distance of losing their heads, and have in extremely trying circumstances conducted themselves with a calm which I have not seen them display in other circumstances. Of the men on my list there are only two who reach this standard, as compared with four women.

If a woman is properly taught to drive from the start, she makes as good and safe a driver as you will find in any month of Sundays. I have watched many women in moments of crisis, and I have never failed to be astonished at the ice-cold presence of mind which a trained woman invariably displays when things become hectic. There are, believe me, far more women of this kind on the road today than there are of the kind so feelingly described in the newspapers. For one woman whom you meet on the road doing something foolish, or dangerous, or both, who induces considerable profanity - no doubt thoroughly well deserved - and in an extreme case should certainly be deprived of her licence, there are hundreds you pass of the kind I know and have attempted to describe to you. You don't notice these because they don't frighten you, or endanger you, or make you use regrettable language, but they are there, and I am glad to say that they are there, so far as my experience goes, in large and comforting numbers.

This "Dangerous Women Drivers" scare is nonsense. The average woman drives quite as safely and as well as the average man, provided she is driving a decent car, and not one of the kind described to me the other day by a woman as "the tumbril" - and a man in a "tumbril" is every bit as dangerous as a woman in the same sinister vehicle.

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And that's where the Introduction to this neat little book, published a loooooong time ago (1925 to be precise), comes to an end. Further chapters, that I may type up when I get a spare hour or two, include equally thrilling information on Buying a New Car, Buying a Second Hand Car, The Sin of Dirt, The Lure of the Gadget, Petrol Consumption, The Sin of Overloading, and several others.

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