Women Drivers

What is it with women drivers? I'm one of them and I don't behave in the way that I see many of them doing nowadays. I admit that I am one of a rare breed, happy to drive anywhere in any kind of vehicle including a transit van. In fact, I drove across southern Spain when I was about 18 and for work courier rare, often priceless eminently breakable antiquities in a knackered old van. So, perhaps I'm a bit of an exception. Ive only had one accident and that was when a young boy decided not to give way on a roundabout that I was on!

However, I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the behaviour of women drivers on the roads, especially those with children. I would go as far as to say that they are as bad as people who drive wearing hats. I don't mean those with baby on board stickers, I can understand their momentary distraction, I mean ones with full blown kids. Take today for example, I was leisurely making my way to the hospital to talk about my forthcoming operation and being over careful with my driving as I was a little bit mentally pre-occupied. I pulled into a road and drove up it, on the other side of the road were lots of parked cars. Not my issue, there were none on my side and so I had right of way. Half way down the road a car screeches towards me, clearly over the speed limit. I stop ( slam on my brakes), as there is a gap in the cars for the person to pull into whilst I carry on my way. The car draws closer, not wanting to pull into the space and effectively trying to get me to reverse down the road (illegal in my understanding). 'MMMM', I think, along with ' I hope I'm not going to be late' and ' this woman clearly cant steer into that large space'. So I sit there as I'm not prepared to risk an accident. The result? The woman slowly steers into the space whilst screaming 'stupid b***ch' at me. Needless to say, she had a car full of children. Forget, whether I'm in the right or not, is there any excuse for that sort of behaviour in front of children? I think not!

This isn't the first time Ive witnessed this sort of behaviour from women who have children in the car. Whilst walking along in Cambridge the other day I saw a similar scenario. In fact it seems to be increasingly common and highlights two things to me:
1) It seems to be perfectly possible to pass your driving test without the need to be able to demonstrate that you can steer your car.
2) It is no surprise that children are becoming more and more aggressive if they witness this sort of behaviour from their parents as an everyday, normal sort of thing.

I do find this all shocking as I try to not swear in front of my children and I always act towards others as I would expect to be treated myself. In other words, I use manners and I expect that of my children. Since when did it become acceptable for this not to be the case?

Women Drivers