It is common knowledge — among men — that lipstick and steering wheels are a disastrous combination. Strangely, the recent discovery that women are better at looking in their mirrors does not seem to have dispelled that notion. So today’s report from Brunel University is a useful reminder that it is men who make more driving blunders, men who dominate the roads lobby, and men who have made jokes about women drivers a national pastime.
Women have the last laugh, for they commit only 18 per cent of speeding offences. And even this paltry figure is inflated by the number who selflessly take the rap on their licences for husbands and boyfriends who would otherwise have been disqualified from their pet pursuit of hurtling around in virility symbols.
Men have long claimed that women’s low conviction rates are due to the male weakness for a prettily batted eyelash. But speed cameras do not flirt. And the Brunel research finds that women are far more likely to comply with cameras than men, who go round the bend with fury in their presence. Policymakers should know that it is mainly blokes who rage against (nanny state) anti-speeding paraphernalia.
No one is perfect. Women have a penchant for crawling along in powerful cars and taking ten minutes to park, men for living life in the fast lane and being responsible for 97 per cent of all dangerous driving. At least there should be some old-fashioned roadside chivalry. But a survey this summer found that a woman stuck with a flat tyre was given the cold shoulder by 726 men who drove past her. Whisper this only, but perhaps these chaps did not know how to fix it.