Motoring Men and Women on the Road Tim figures contained
in Mr. Hore-Belisha's statement on the failures to pass the new driving test have already given fresh life to the still acute controversy about the respective abilities at the wheel of men and 'women. Approximately 1 per cent. of the men tested up to the middle of June failed to satisfy the examiners and approximately 6 per cent. of the women. Those who, rightly or wrongly, hold that the vast majority of women are bad drivers, either psychologically or mechanically, eagerly- welcomed the results as a proof of their die-hard contention, if they did not actually crow over them.
In point of fact, of course, the figures prove very little. The number of women drivers is still far below that of the men and practically all of them are private drivers. There are a few women who drive hirelings, but so far the charge of commercial vehicles is almost entirely in the hands of men. Very few women present themselves, for examination with the purpose of establishing a means of livelihood and the fact that failure means no more than being depriVed of a possible amusement must affect their attitude towards a business that is entirely serious for men. Moreover it would be absurd to attach any real importance to these figures or make any deduction from them until an analysis is published. of the failures: How many of the 730 women were ploughed on driving skill, how many on technical and theoretical knowledge, how many on familiarity with the Highway Code ? The success or failure of the candidates in what is certainly a trying test for anyone but the com- pletely placid and unimaginative is no criterion of the capabilities of the general run of actual drivers—men or women.
Accidents apart, such as a fit of examination nerves, the test should admit people who have the temperament, the common sense and the judgement necessary for the making of a safe driver, and exclude the others. That is all that can be expected of it. Neither the present test nor any ever likely to be devised will make a driver safe. It is 'a commonplace that many a road-hog would pass almost any test (that was not composed of circus tricks) with honours in every desirable quality—presence of mind, caution, the sixth sense and skill, particularly skill—and it is quite con- ceivable that people who , have every qualification of the really good driver might fail on some point where they would never fail again. The driving test is subject to the prime drawback of every examination in that neither success nor failure can be invariably accepted as proof of a candidate's fitness to hold a licence.
The tests have proved nothing yet, but the old question remains. Are women, on the whole, as well equipped tem- peramentally as men to take charge of a potentially very dangerous machine ? The 'answer, if there is one, can only be looked for on the road. ' A good, woman driver is at least as pod—that is, as safe-Has a good man driver ; a bad woman driver is usually worse than a bad man driver ; the good are in a depressingly small minority. .
Having known a wide variety of women drivers over a long term of years, and seen them driving in all sorts of conditions at home and abroad, I am nearly sure now that what makes a woman a bad driver is, more inability to concentrate than recklessness, ignorance or anything else. Most women can comfortably do or think about two things at once and talk to two people at the same time. It is a useful accomplishment, and as long as they reserve it for any place but the driving scat of a car we may respectfully admire it. In a car it is fatal. It ceases to be an accomplishment and becomes, paradoxically, a menace. However well they can do several things at once on land, so to speak, in a car they fail lamentably, as a mail must fail. Your good driver can of course carry on a perfectly intelligent conversation while driving, interrupted at times by the demands of the traffic upon his attention, but only interrupted. For the necessary seconds his mind is wholly fixed on the road problem before him, to the excluSion of everything else under the sun, but as soon as the problem is solved he will continue as before, even to finishing a broken sentence every word of which he has forgotten during the pause. His vigilance is never relaxed.
It is entirely automatic, the ability to talk and to stop talking, to listen and to ignore, automatic as the movement of his fodt ofithe brake-pedal. Your dangerous woman driver, capable of multiple feats of entertaining at home, does not stop talking, does not wholly disengage her attention from her companion and the subject of their talk. She is still trying to do two things at once, when one of them demands the whole of her attention. She shows this unmistakably by :turning her head to speak, by making wrong or meaningless signals or by forgetting to signal at all. That common inability to talk to a companion without looking at them seems to be entirely a feminine trait, and the oddest thing about it is that women who are in other respects good and careful drivers, who know what they are doing and are really familiar with the hundred risks of the road seem unable to rid themselves of it.
It is just as absurd to condemn all woman drivers for the crimes of some as to infer that because 'only one per cent. of the men candidates for the tests failed, ninety-nine per cent. must be good and capable drivers. It is just because there are fewer women drivers than men, and because the good ons are so excellent, that one notices the mistakes of the otherh. Their mistakes, when they are due to lack of concentration, are very bad, and your vague woman driver, using a busy road precisely as if it ran empty through a desert, utterly unconscious or heedless of other road-users, is a very present danger, a danger only faintly mitigated by the fact that other drivers are learning to look out for her. At the same time it should be remembered in excuse for her that she has to divide her undivided attention upon driving, other traffic approach- ing, following, overtaking and overtaken, cross-roads, speed- limit signs, her speed-indicator, and upon the exercise of her sixth sense. A formidable list for one who has not that definite singleness' of purpose that is an essential of safe driving.
It Should be no more difficult to teach a woman the subtleties of driving a car than a man, provided she has a feeling for mechanics. in fact you may be perfectly certain that in nine cases out of ten a good and skilful woman driver is also a competent mechanic—or at all events that she knows what her car is doing, what stresses are permissible, and what the result of failure is likely to be. 'Which brings me regretfully to the other reason for the frequent failure of women to make good drivers. Very few know anything useful about machinery, and still fewer care. To them a car is a convenient, even at times an amusing toy, well supplied with levers and things which you pull or twist to make it do what you want. How or why it does it is of no interest whatever to them. They take the view that a machine can be relied upon to act mechanically, that is to say automatically, and the miracle is that the inevit- able lesson should cost them so little. For, you must admit; they are supremely lucky.
JOHN PRIOLEAV.
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