Typical woman driving a car too big for her

I really don’t notice any difference in driving and manoeuvring mistakes between men and women but what I do notice is that when a mistake is made by a woman the fact it’s a woman making the mistake is woven into the criticism/insult. You don’t even need to be making a mistake.

To reverse into my drive from a single track road I have to hold up the traffic for about 30 seconds depending on how difficult it’s been made due to parking around my drive. People get very impatient even though I’m clearly not hanging around and have no choice in order to get into my own drive. I am better at this than my DH because I reverse a truck as well as a car into the drive all the time. When he is reversing into the drive he may get a revving engine or a bit of gesticulation, when I reverse into the drive I frequently hear ‘come on you stupid bitch’, ‘fuck sake, get a car you can handle’ or similar, or much more impatience from the beginning. It’s from men not women but it’s disappointing if women are parroting the idea that women can’t drive or manoeuvre as well as men.

They are. Most of the well off middle classes around here think it’s tacky to have a big prestige car. It’s wealthy really quite elderly female pensioners with little cars (who probably shouldn’t still be driving) that shop there mainly where I live, or wealthy pensioners in a car their husband wanted to show off to his golf club mates in.

I drive a Puma if I am on my own or a VW Crafter if I have my little boy with me, I can park them both with ease (and I am in my 60s), although the Crafter does overhang the bay behind us sometimes. I think some people are good at parking and some aren't, I am not sure age or male/female comes in to it.

I wouldn't criticise the person in the big car unless they were making a real cock up of parking it. Nothing wrong with taking your time and lining it up properly. Better than the driver rushing the procedure, parking wonky and making it difficult for whoever parks next to them. Perhaps the woman has a partner like my late DH. He was fanatical about the cars and god forbid you got a bit of dirt on it, let along a scratch! I too used to park extremely carefully so as to avoid the abuse and silent treatment I'd get if I scratched the alloys.

Is that because of the timings of it, school run etc, which are generally more frequently done by women?

It’s situational bias isn’t it 🤷‍♀️

Same here. I drive a Hyundai i.10, 2009 plate. Lovely little car for getting around town and for parking. SUV drivers trying to negotiate city streets look like pricks.

Perhaps suggest they walk home if they’re unable to self regulate whilst waiting for others to park.

Oh crap….[makes hasty exit].
I don’t pass the “Waitrose test”

A lot of men are quite the liability in their vans. I mean as women we are really paying extra on insurance for men's dangerous driving.

Come on @SerenaCat93you know well enough that the majority of oriole who own an SUV never pull anything nor go off road.
OP I think the issue is parking spaces are not big enough for these big cars. I also think women are more careful - men may appear more confident but they don’t do a better job at actually parking. Slow and steady is just as good as fast if the car gets parked properly.

Yay! Sexism AND ageism!

It's not senior citizens in general we're talking about here. It is families who have bought a huge car / SUV / whatever. Besides, the sort of person who shops at Waitrose is not the sort of person who has a small, cheap runabout anyway.

I drive a small car as it's cheaper and I mostly use it for short local trips. I get annoyed by all the people (not specifically women) who drive MASSIVE chunky cars and still use our local lanes which are not built for their vehicles and who are the worst at finding the best places to stop and pass each other.

Babes (of any gender), if your car's gigantic, just take the long way around (we live in an area where there are alternative routes). Horses and farm vehicles, cool that's fine, crack on, this is your place and you know how to drive in the country lanes.

I would never say "typical woman driver" because in my personal experience, the women in my life are excellent capable drivers.

In all honesty, I've seen far more women than men who struggle with parking. Some of them seem to actually think it's an endearing quality, which pisses me off.
I used to share a house in London with a woman who was quite proud of the fact that she couldn't park - she'd literally abandon her car in the middle of the road and come running in to call me to park it for her!

None of which answers your question about women with big cars, but suspect some of the people I've encountered would benefit from a smaller vehicle that is easier to handle...

Yes and I’m very clearly not talking about you. I used to work for Landrover and when I did you were vastly outnumbered by the idiots getting stuck in off road mode on High Street Ken. If you live somewhere rural, of course more people need them. But cities are clogged up by SUV people who haven’t seen a horse in decades.

It used to be a rule that Defenders were driven by people who needed a 4x4 and everything else was driven by someone who didn’t. Those days are gone but there are a lot of people in Jaguar and Porsche SUVs who only see fields on their way to Cornwall for hollibobs.

Right so you agreed with her then.

So what's your AIBU?

Because to read your opening post it looks as though you disagree 😳

I think people become less adept / confident at reverse parking when they age, and often an old man buys a big (long) car that they don’t need because of the prestige he associates with them, and the wife is struggling to park it at Waitrose when she’d be far happier in something small like a Micra or Mini etc. that’s what I assume when waiting for them to complete their 95 point turn. It doesn’t look fun. Why else would she be driving it?

Women vs men debates are so 1970.

At least most men are tall enough to be able to see over the steering wheel of a bloody great 4x4.😂

Some of the absolute worst manoeuvring I've ever seen in my life has been in school and supermarket car parks, and yes, the chief culprits are small women in massive cars.

On the other hand, most of the worst and seriously dangerous driving, overtaking, speeding, cutting up and tailgating I've ever seen has been vehicles driven by men.

I live in the States, where there are tonnes of big cars and some much larger than anything we have, and can definitively say that both men and women can be terrible at parking them.

It’s always amusing to see a bloke park a large truck at the very end of the car park where all the spots are open, taking up several because he can’t park the thing, and then walk all the way to the shops. Good on them for staying well away from everyone else’s cars though. 😂

Has it ever occurred to you that a lot of women need an SUV for it's actual capabilities? I bought an outlander to tow a horse box, off road in the paddock, tow a trailer of hay, for all of my camping gear in and drive off-road to wild locations to camp in. All the women I know with SUVs actually use them for what they were built for. Also we all live in the country side where our roads regularly flood and snow and ice means that my husband in his regular car can't get to work/pick up our daughter when the roads get too bad so he takes my car or I go. Obviously everyone we know here is also having to contend with those conditions on a regular basis.

The only person I know driving an SUV for status and safety is a man.

Go to my local towns multi story at about 10 am and you’ll see lots of 4x4’s being reverse parked by women, perfectly competently.

I have driven them for 16 years. I can reverse park (easier to leave) much better than my husband, who prefers a little sporty car.

My first one had reversing beepers. So I relied on mirrors. My current one, has 360 degree cameras, which shows my car on a big screen and can park by itself, if I ask it to.

In other words, it’s sexist nonsense.

In my experience, when I see a driver struggling to reverse or park a large car, more often than not, it's a woman driving.

Yes, men are just as bad

but if its' a woman driving, I would also say "typical woman" - and "typical man.." when it's one.

It's the "driving a car too big for them" the point of the sentence, male or female is irrelevant.

You just need to go around a primary school at school run time to be confident, that yes, women and men are equally bad drivers, equally dangerous, and equally as stupid. It's not flattering.