Not content with winding women drivers up in November, Erin Baker (Telegraph Cars MD) has posted the same feature again in December about why women drivers drive her mad.

And mad she clearly is. According to her ‘some’ women drivers need to up their game. Shock horror. She’s right of course in the same way as ‘some’ male drivers cause the most serious accidents.

But by using her sensational heading she has seriously raised my hackles which is not to be recommended.

Now I must confess I’m not 100% sure where my biological hackles live when they’re at home but when they are raised, my jaw strengthens in a contentious pout, my temples tingle and I imagine my face takes on a rouge-ish bad tempered look.

Not a pretty sight and one we can all do without at this time of merry festive cheer to all men (and women…).

So what do women drivers do so badly?

This is the gist of Erin’s Queen Bee vitriol…

1/ That ‘some’ women drive badly?

I’m sure she’s right.

2/ That some women sit in the outer lane encouraging others to undertake?

That’s back to the Highway Code naughty step for you Erin…

3/ That ‘woolly-like’ women were wrong to say ‘no’ to raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph?

Despite admitting that today’s de facto speed is c80mph already (allowing for 70mph plus a 10% tolerance plus 2mph) could it be that these ‘woolly-like’ females calculated that if 70mph = 79mph in real life then 80mph = a real life speed of 90mph for those drivers that will always push the envelope to its limit. Which is then too fast, say I.

And a few other barbed comments reserved for women drivers…

Anger management controls when driving

Of course Erin’s internal anger is her personal problem but the fact she sees bad female drivers everywhere she turns is something she needs to address.

To help her, I’d recommend she attend one of the excellent Ladies Garage Evenings we promote especially one where the speakers include Vic Botterill. His presentation is called ‘Painting your Face from Within’ and makes the simple point that if you start driving as a miserable git (Vic’s words) that’s what you’ll be to others. Vic’s personal beef used to be men in hats – it was always a man in a hat when he looked at an offending driver. For others it’ll be caravanners, women or so-called boy racers…

But when it’s women drivers, it’s usually men being critical about us, because many of them find it impossible to accept that we might be the statistically safer gender when it comes to serious accidents. Granted these are usually caused by younger males where testosterone and an unfortunate inability for some to say no to a cocktail of drink, drugs and driving are recognised factors.

But again – this is a small minority and I wouldn’t dream of tarring a complete gender with the same brush…

Encouraging women to be better drivers

I’d much prefer Erin uses her considerable writing skills to produce constructive and supportive motoring articles encouraging us all to be better drivers. By all means start by berating us for not being as good a driver as she so clearly considers herself to be (hoping nobody reads her earlier feature about ‘where’s my spare tyre and what do I do with it’…) then she might move into a positive gear making recommendations about confidence courses or the supportive advice and information we provide for women, for starters.

After all, Erin could be a veritable role model amongst us foxy ladies, were more women to read the Telegraph Cars supplement than do already…

But why would any of us want to read this if this is the sort of ‘holier than thou’ motoring attitude and abuse we’d find, written by a member of our own sex?

And one who clearly knows what marital stress is all about, how this affects men and women differently yet seems to have neither tolerance nor time for the rest of us in the same busy lifeboat?

FOXY

“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”
memorably said by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright