18 January,2011 07:00 AM IST | | Prachi Sibal
I can't help but agree when men doubt the driving skills of their opposite sex. As easy as it might be to shrug this off as chauvinism, I think it stems from a lot moreu00a0 ufffd sometimes pure practicality.
When was the last time you saw a woman reverse straight out of a parking spot with ease? Or when was the one time when your heart did not skip a beat while she ignored the left side of the car and drove so close you could nearly feel the breath of the driver in the adjacent car?
Time and again, debates, quarrels and references to many a Googled research have worked in favour of the male clan. It is nearly acceptable to be a man and hurl unpleasantries at women behind the wheel, what remains shockingly unpalatable is women drivers who feel quite the same way.
I cringe as much as men do to see a car not parked, but sprawled across the street and offer to drive when with female friends
Having spent a good five years behind the wheel of a not-so-fancy second hand car and after having reversed my way in and out of parking lots across cities, my sympathies lie closer with the opposite sex than ever before. I cringe as much to see a car not parked, sprawled across the street as any of the men folk and offer to drive when travelling with women friends.
A car's open bonnet does not send me in flights of horror and a punctured tyre does not qualify as a mark of all the world's miseries being unleashed on me. The fifth gear is of as much use to me as fellow drivers from the opposite sex.
This, however, does not stop me from feeling lonely in the world of women driver haters, which has men inu00a0 a very large majority. A word against the woman in the car ahead or an attempt to overtake the much-modified fancy car is still looked upon by male passengers in my car with much distaste.
Not to mention the same above mentioned passengers on other inebriated days would easily hand me the keys to their prized machines and sleep in the backseat while I navigate.
The ordeal hardly ends here. I cannot, despite being at the receiving end of the many road vagaries, so much as utter something unpleasant to a fellow woman driver about her display of road rage that could have nearly killed me. I would for the same be accused of siding with the other even enemy clan in this regard.
As much of a rarity as bad male drivers can get (believe you me they exist), women driver haters who are women themselves must be allowed to coexist and given the space to hate in peace.
