Secret Diary of a Female Petrolhead: Please Keep Your Hands Inside the Vehicle
If you’re wondering why I have been suspiciously silent over the last few weeks, rest easy. I’ve been preparing to sit my driving test by not killing people on a weekly basis.
The first person I didn’t kill was the bloke in the angry Merc behind me, who decided to respond to a downpour in London rush hour traffic by tailgating a car sporting L-plates and stalling at tricky junctions. I don’t understand the mindset of people like this. There you are, in your expensive and pointless car (because who cares about 0-60 when you’re gonna be doing 0-10 at most, and wearing out your left foot), and you think, “Hmmm, yes. I think my car could do with having a little more Fiat inserted up its nostrils.” So you start breathing down the neck of a tiny little 500 with a driver who clearly has yet to master indicators. Or the clutch. Or – worryingly – the handbrake.
It was worse with the second person I didn’t kill. That was me, by the way. It was a few weeks later, with the indicators now mastered but the elusive handbrake still outfoxing me at every turn. I turned right, as I am often instructed to do, and did NOT get rammed in the passenger side by on-coming traffic. I declared the turn a success, and exited the main road, entering the right-hand street, which had a rather steep gradient, almost hill-like in its ferocity.
At the top of the hill was a van.
We are all familiar with Van Man. He cat-calls with the firm conviction that he is somehow brightening up your day. He plays obnoxiously loud music and makes racist remarks, happy in the belief that he represents The Real England, whatever that might be. He also never – ever – gives way. Ever.
Spare a thought for the state of my pants when I saw Van Man accelerating down that hill towards me.
At my left was a car. At my right was a tiny narrow spare, then another car. Behind me was a busy main road. And in front of me was my rapidly-approaching death, in the form of a van so big it wouldn’t even see my tiny little Fiat before it squashed it like a bug. A small, white, L-plated bug.
At the very last second, when my eyes were like saucers and I was seriously regretting not having sorted that sodding will, he veered off into the tiny gap on my right. He didn’t even clip my car (although the car on the other side may not have been so lucky). By all accounts he didn’t even notice that he had nearly caused vehicular dismemberment.
“Well,” my instructor said brightly, after a horrifying and awkward pause, “shall we get on, then?”
Needless to say, I nearly burst into tears. “What the hell was that? That was like a cartoon death! I don’t want to die a cartoon death! I don’t want to be killed by a flying piano or a toilet seat, or a giant truck that doesn’t see me and runs me over!”
“Don’t worry,” my instructor soothed, looking a little rattled himself. “That sort of thing doesn’t actually happen in real life.”
That thought gave me pause. I wondered what, precisely, he thought we were doing right now. Maybe it was a rehearsal for real life? Maybe real motoring wouldn’t be like this. Maybe – and here was a horrifying possibility – it would be worse.
Like this, except white, a Fiat, and EVEN SMALLER. Photo from [email protected]
It was.
Over the next few weeks I’ve had parking spaces stolen by aggressive BMWs that more or less manhandled me out of the way, I’ve nearly been killed by drivers doing 40 in a 20mph zone down a sodding bus lane during restrictions, I’ve nearly squashed toddlers that decided to run out into the middle of the road while their parents looked on, oblivious, and – worst of all – I once nudged the rear bumper of another car. It was at less than 1mph and left no physical mark whatsoever, but I maintain that the psychological scarring will stay with me.
My conclusion is this: you would have to be absolutely mad to want to drive in London. You have nowhere to park, and everywhere there are people that view red lights as simply suggestions, bus lanes as express lanes, and children as speed bumps. If you are a woman in a small car, every large car will attempt to physically crowd you off the road, and if you are a woman in a large car, everyone will hate you because you are clearly being overly aggressive in daring to get behind the wheel of something bigger than an armchair.
And yet.
I loved that stupid little Fiat. I called it Bertie, and the moment it was named, it leaped about like an eager little puppy. I did a little dance of triumph on discovering that my turns in the road were textbook-perfect, and that parallel parking really isn’t all that bad. True, my instructor was a closet sadist who decided to make things ‘more interesting’ by making me do obscenely complicated compound manoeuvres – reversing around a corner with obstacles and a time limit springs to mind – but once you choose to view the whole thing as an elaborate obstacle course, it’s fine. And the little Fiat 500 made me feel ridiculously proud of myself every time I got behind the wheel. Look at me, I’m driving!
It’s a shame it had to end. All things must, I suppose, but it made me tear up a little bit just the same to walk around to the passenger side and get in, knowing that this would be it. The thing about driving tests is, no one tells you that you don’t get to have any more lessons after you pass.
Bye bye, Bertie. You were a smart little car and you took a lot of abuse. I’ll come visit you over the summer for my advanced driving course.
In the meantime, though, I’m going to look up Bertie’s sexy two-wheel cousin and sit my CBT.
After all, what’s the point of a driving license if you only get to drive cars? There’s a motorbike out there with my name on it.
Yes, my mum sent it to me. It has little hearts inside as well.
- Vik has now recovered from her driving ordeal, and is fully licensed to make cars go vroom. Stay tuned for Project Engine and further motorsport adventures.
Oh, God. I’m learning to drive right now and the number of scary, aggressive drivers out there is just horrifying. What do they think they’ll gain by tailgating me and freaking me out? Or beeping at me for not getting onto a busy roundabout fast enough? All that happens is that I panic and sometimes stall, delaying them even further. WHY DO YOU DO THIS, PEOPLE? WHY WOULD YOU TORMENT ME?
Congrats on passing your test!
Thank you!
All that happens is that I panic and sometimes stall, delaying them even further. WHY DO YOU DO THIS, PEOPLE? WHY WOULD YOU TORMENT ME?
YES, THIS. The only times I have stalled is when someone has tried to crowd me, and I’ve taken up the clutch too quickly. The old car I had was so clutch-heavy and the gearbox so broken that it took real effort to move either, and you had to take it damn slow or it would stall. This meant a good 5 seconds per gear change. The moment I switched to Bertie, he of the new gearbox and shiny clutch, my gear changes became super-smooth.
My instructor gave me a lot of help on the clutch control actually, he dragged me out on a hill and made me practice keeping the car still – very fiddly, but after 2hrs of that there was a resounding improvement, I recommend it!
I drive a Fiat 500 (new one, not an original) and I have to say that bigger cars still try to crowd me off the road. It’s a big car thing. Women drivers in big cars are just as bad.
But still! Congrats on passing the test! You need to try some track driving now…
Thank you, I’m planning on it! Really keen to try rally driving, actually, it looks like a lot of fun.
trust me, get a van like the fiat scudo and no-one will ever mess with you again!
I wasn’t going to comment, then was, then saw a tweet, then decided to. I’m really a little bit uncomfortable with this “van man” idea you appear to be talking about. It does seem like a little bit of a stereotype you’re perpetuating. Thinking about it, the number of vans that are driven poorly must be pretty low, considering the number that are hired and driven by people using them only once or twice, or driven purely in connection with employment – when was the last time you saw a corporate-marked van being driven badly? I don’t dismiss your experience, but I think you need to think about what it is you’re trying to say here. Is perpetuating a stereotype about van drivers really the right way to encourage people to rethink their views on women’s relationship with cars?
I wouldn’t say perpetuating stereotypes in itself is always to be condemned. Otherwise we’d all be condemning Spaced, Black Books, Peanuts and Gerald Scarfe. Or perhaps the ultimate Van Man show, Only Fools and Horses. It can be lazy humour, or it can provide an immediacy of humour (caricatures, satire etc). A good example might be Privilege Denying Dude, which I found refreshing in its “I see your stereotype of me and raise you your own predictability” stance. Some people found it made them uncomfortable; a lot of people found the opportunity for biting pushback in what is assuredly not a level playing field comforting.
On a detailed level, White Van Man jokes can have elements of gender and particularly class stereotypes, yes. There are some posts on class, humour and pop culture hopefully upcoming on here in the near future, what with one thing and another, but those are still being drafted at the mo.
I think correctly identifying stereotype use in itself isn’t accomplishing a great deal in my view beyond identifying the humour toolbox. I think a more pertinent question is “is this a damaging stereotype pushing the oppression of male van drivers the world over as it is used in this post?” How is it being used? Who is using it? Some stereotype humour is so awful we can’t quite apply this to it so much (minstrel shows, say!) but I’m profoundly not convinced this is one of those moments.
In which case, y’know, having had a van-based catcall only last week, I think I’m with Vik (whose descriptions of her own driving are hardly beyond some self-deprecating humour, too; the post is really not an assault on men). And being honest? When I edited this, I laughed. Like many things on here it’s a mileage-may-vary, but I think Petrolhead’s aim is to reach a lot of people (and specifically women drivers), and one way to do that is to mention some of the anecdotal stuff women stereotypically do encounter on the road.
If this were a Gamer Diary post about someone having the stereotypically horrendous oft-blogged fat-ugly-slutty female gamer experience, and a load of male gamers showed up going “we’re not like that!” I’d just say “Good, hurrah!” But the post, raising awareness of a set of attitudes from which those types can very often come, would very likely still stand.
Like I said, I did do a bit of thinking before deciding to post. I don’t honestly think Viktoriya is single-handedly responsible for the oppression of men with ven everywhere or anything daft like that, but the use of an easy stereotype like “van drivers are maniacs”, particularly when I’ve been in vans with drivers who weren’t maniacs many times, just sort of took me out of the post for a moment. Honestly I hate cars and driving so I do sort of read these posts with a smile and a nod and move on most of the time, but this time I wondered if there was perhaps a wider topic for discussion. I wasn’t massively offended and outraged, and I don’t think anyone would be; nor do I mean to disparage the series or its author since I’m sure for those who are into driving it’s very interesting. It just raised a question for me. I hope that’s okay.
I figured I’d step in at this point as the thread is threatening to spill into “what Viktoriya REALLY means is…”
I’m sure you’ve been in vans driven by good drivers, Russell, but I’m afraid that my experience has been the oppposite. I had driving lessons every week in Croydon and surrounding South West London, and all exaggeration aside I was nearly killed twice by van and lorry drivers. True, other drivers were aggressive and unpleasant as well, but it was only the van and lorry drivers that could actually have resulted in a nasty accident if I didn’t take evasive action. Short of giving me the exciting opportunity to use “evasive action” in a sentence, they didn’t actually gain anything from the encounters: they didn’t get anywhere quicker, and they didn’t benefit in any way from putting me in quite real danger. The one incident I didn’t mention was with an articulated lorry that decided to ignore the proper way to enter a roundabout, and simply enter when he pleased, swinging several tons of lorry around to nearly slap into the side of my tiny little car. My instructor actually took down his license-plate number to report him for dangerous driving.
To clarify Van Man: if it had been anyone other than a white twenty-something male with a shaved head, tattoos and loud music blaring out of his windows as he bore down on my little car at a million miles per hour, I may not have used the stereotype. But in this instance, it WAS the stereotype, come to life. I therefore feel my use of it was perfectly valid.
On the driving in London thing: I have to disagree. Driving in London is fine, and the confidence is something that will come with time. I don’t mean that in a patronising way, just as someone who’s had a licence for ten years, it’s true. My old instructor used to tell me to ignore them, and so you should.
On the white van thing – Russell, I’m sorry, but the white van stereotype is more widely true and applicable than you think. I started cycle-commuting to work 15 months ago, and pretty quickly got fed up of abuse and poor treatment from drivers of all manner of vehicles, so I started counting. The verdict: half – HALF – of all unbranded work vans will either drive so badly I have to change my behaviour to avoid them, or they shout abuse or catcalls out of their window at me. That’s half, of all I encounter on my 20 minute commute. That’s appalling.