One evening when we were out walking, my friend Swabha came up with a question that I have lately given much thought to. She said-" I have heard that women are generally bad drivers. What do you think?"
I protested against the very thought and said that the opinion was probably of a male chauvinistic origin. Being the proud possessor of a driving license I aspire to be as good a driver as my father(which translates to pretty good) and he says I am making progress. So as a would be 'good lady driver' I felt the need to defend my comrades on wheels.
The number of lady drivers on our roads has increased greatly in the past few years but their ratio to their male counterparts is still very small. So in the small population of female drivers, if a few drive badly, they could become a sort of majority within a minority and hence the cause of a generalization. What I am saying is that 'few' or even 'most' is not the same as 'all'. On the other hand, I have to concede that the lady drivers I have traveled with were not all that great at it.
There are not many girls who 'have a go' on their father's car before getting their license. Women mostly learn to drive form driving schools. And having gone to one myself I can say that driving schools teach you close to nothing. These are a few thing you learn in a driving school-
1)This is the accelerator, that is the brake, the clutch is on the left
2)There are 4 gears and reverse. Upto 10kmph in first, upto 20 in second, till 40 in 3rd and
steady 40 in fourth(40 is the highest allowed speed in most driving schools)
3)These are the hand signals but I can forget about them as soon as I get my license since I will
be driving with a.c
4)I know how to steer...with instructions
5)I will be O.K even if I make a mistake(the instructor sitting next to me has a brake and clutch
in front of him as well)
6)The H is a piece of cake. Look at the lines on the ground and keep calm...any idiot can do it.
Armed with these pearls of wisdom, if you attempt to drive a car in Kerala, to be specific let us say Calicut, you will be in some sort of a fix before 10 minutes on a main road.
What is good driving anyway? Knowing how things work is a necessary part of; it but is it all? Good driving includes not only the moving part -it is also how fast you move,how smooth your drive, how you turn,how you hoot the horn, how you overtake, how and where you park, how you stop, how you react to 'Situations' and a million other things. So, is a fresher to know all these intuitively? If good driving is a talent, only few are blessed with it; the rest of us have to cultivate it. So our average lady driver -who goes to a driving school, gets her license, employs a chauffer to sit beside her for about a month (while she learns that driving with only one set of controls is a bit tricky) and finally sets out on her own; is she to be blamed if her driving is a bit crude?
On a happier note there are excellent lady drivers also among us. Some of them are even behind the steering wheels of transport buses and lorries.
Here is what happened one monday morning while my father drove me to college-
We had passed medical college on the way to Kunnamangalam. There was a silver Santro Xing in front of us and a golden Baleno in front of it. The driver of the Santro was braking often (the red tail-lights kept lighting up) and my father (who is rather proud of his driving skills) had plenty to say. Dad never loses an opportunity to lecture me about various aspects of driving and here was '100 things not to do to a car' right in front of us. When my father had exhausted the '100...' we overtook the Santro. Now we had the Baleno in front of us and a different tutorial for me. The Baleno obviously had someone who knew their gears in the driving seat and my Dad was radiating approval. "Will you look at that guy...not like the Santro fellow...he knows what he is doing." "Optimum braking at turns...see "."Perfect speed control". etc. Once when we drew near the other car I had seen that the driver was a lady with a balding man sitting next to her . There was something very familiar about that bald head which I could not place at that moment. I did not say anything to my father and he continued in his praise for 'him' as he thought the other driver to be a man. When we turned in to Kunnamangalam at the junction and the Baleno turned in front of us, we were finally able to glimpse the occupants. The lady was none other than Elizabeth ma'm( Dr.Elizabeth Elias,Professor ECED,NITC) and the balding gentleman was Zacharia sir (Dr.Zacharia Varghese, Professor CED,NITC)...no wonder the head was familiar (after seeing it bent over our record books for an entire semester in the SM lab). My father was clearly thrown off balance...after praising 'that guy' for about half an hour 'he' tuns out to be a woman. Always adept at falling feet down he came up with "Your teacher, eh? Learn to drive like her and you can take the car out on your own." So, I got a new goal and Elizabeth ma'm got two admirers.
So men,the next time you feel that your mother/wife/sister/daughter is demonstrating some patchy driving, don't give up on them saying 'women!' instead try telling them what is expected of them in such a situation. And women...LISTEN...they will probably sound condescending but they might have a point...so listen to advice/criticism(if they don't have a point you can always discard it).
I protested against the very thought and said that the opinion was probably of a male chauvinistic origin. Being the proud possessor of a driving license I aspire to be as good a driver as my father(which translates to pretty good) and he says I am making progress. So as a would be 'good lady driver' I felt the need to defend my comrades on wheels.
The number of lady drivers on our roads has increased greatly in the past few years but their ratio to their male counterparts is still very small. So in the small population of female drivers, if a few drive badly, they could become a sort of majority within a minority and hence the cause of a generalization. What I am saying is that 'few' or even 'most' is not the same as 'all'. On the other hand, I have to concede that the lady drivers I have traveled with were not all that great at it.
There are not many girls who 'have a go' on their father's car before getting their license. Women mostly learn to drive form driving schools. And having gone to one myself I can say that driving schools teach you close to nothing. These are a few thing you learn in a driving school-
1)This is the accelerator, that is the brake, the clutch is on the left
2)There are 4 gears and reverse. Upto 10kmph in first, upto 20 in second, till 40 in 3rd and
steady 40 in fourth(40 is the highest allowed speed in most driving schools)
3)These are the hand signals but I can forget about them as soon as I get my license since I will
be driving with a.c
4)I know how to steer...with instructions
5)I will be O.K even if I make a mistake(the instructor sitting next to me has a brake and clutch
in front of him as well)
6)The H is a piece of cake. Look at the lines on the ground and keep calm...any idiot can do it.
Armed with these pearls of wisdom, if you attempt to drive a car in Kerala, to be specific let us say Calicut, you will be in some sort of a fix before 10 minutes on a main road.
What is good driving anyway? Knowing how things work is a necessary part of; it but is it all? Good driving includes not only the moving part -it is also how fast you move,how smooth your drive, how you turn,how you hoot the horn, how you overtake, how and where you park, how you stop, how you react to 'Situations' and a million other things. So, is a fresher to know all these intuitively? If good driving is a talent, only few are blessed with it; the rest of us have to cultivate it. So our average lady driver -who goes to a driving school, gets her license, employs a chauffer to sit beside her for about a month (while she learns that driving with only one set of controls is a bit tricky) and finally sets out on her own; is she to be blamed if her driving is a bit crude?
On a happier note there are excellent lady drivers also among us. Some of them are even behind the steering wheels of transport buses and lorries.
Here is what happened one monday morning while my father drove me to college-
We had passed medical college on the way to Kunnamangalam. There was a silver Santro Xing in front of us and a golden Baleno in front of it. The driver of the Santro was braking often (the red tail-lights kept lighting up) and my father (who is rather proud of his driving skills) had plenty to say. Dad never loses an opportunity to lecture me about various aspects of driving and here was '100 things not to do to a car' right in front of us. When my father had exhausted the '100...' we overtook the Santro. Now we had the Baleno in front of us and a different tutorial for me. The Baleno obviously had someone who knew their gears in the driving seat and my Dad was radiating approval. "Will you look at that guy...not like the Santro fellow...he knows what he is doing." "Optimum braking at turns...see "."Perfect speed control". etc. Once when we drew near the other car I had seen that the driver was a lady with a balding man sitting next to her . There was something very familiar about that bald head which I could not place at that moment. I did not say anything to my father and he continued in his praise for 'him' as he thought the other driver to be a man. When we turned in to Kunnamangalam at the junction and the Baleno turned in front of us, we were finally able to glimpse the occupants. The lady was none other than Elizabeth ma'm( Dr.Elizabeth Elias,Professor ECED,NITC) and the balding gentleman was Zacharia sir (Dr.Zacharia Varghese, Professor CED,NITC)...no wonder the head was familiar (after seeing it bent over our record books for an entire semester in the SM lab). My father was clearly thrown off balance...after praising 'that guy' for about half an hour 'he' tuns out to be a woman. Always adept at falling feet down he came up with "Your teacher, eh? Learn to drive like her and you can take the car out on your own." So, I got a new goal and Elizabeth ma'm got two admirers.
So men,the next time you feel that your mother/wife/sister/daughter is demonstrating some patchy driving, don't give up on them saying 'women!' instead try telling them what is expected of them in such a situation. And women...LISTEN...they will probably sound condescending but they might have a point...so listen to advice/criticism(if they don't have a point you can always discard it).
3 comments:
hey that was a nice post!
Thank you.
good style of writing, i expect like this variety from u...
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