to find it a little bit pathetic when grown women say they won't drive long distances

[emkana]

of more than 30 (!) miles because they are scared of the driving and navigating.

Is it really that hard, am I missing something here?

Well, I don't do the driving if OH and I are travelling a long distance as I don't really like driving and he does. Does that make me pathetic? OH spends all day working confined in an office. I work in the transport industry and spend every day moving 100s of people 1000s of miles. I have no desire to drive 4 hours on my day off. That doesn't mean I can't or won't do it though. I just prefer to take the opportunity to be a passenger when I can.

YABU I was in an absolutely horific accident years ago. My closest friend died. I have not been able to drive since. In real life I do not tell people why I do not. I do notice all the eye rolling and comments about me being pathetic.

One day maybe I will show people my scars. My decision - no one elses buisiness really. Everyone is different surely. Some people don't like snakes they don't bother me. You get tons of I hate spiders threads on here. Are those people pathetic as well ?

i am an anxious driver.

I drive every day, have done for 25 years, travel great distances when I have to....I have driven on 3 continents, in big and small cars, automatics and manuals....but I do not like driving.

I get no macho thrill out of going fast. I care not one jot about engine size, BHP or any of that crap. My car gets me from A to B and back again.

I do not consider myself pathetic in any way shape or form, nor do I defer to my husband when it comes to driving.

I prefer to sit in the passenger seat if we are travelling together as a family. I prefer not to travel somewhere I do not know unless I have to. I will, but if there is the option of someone else driving, I will take it.

as an aside, if im driving, I cannot stand my husband clinging onto the inner door handle and stomping his foot harshly as though there were another brake peddle on the left hand side of the car, all while accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. I hate him saying "you can overtake you know" when I dont feel it is safe to do so. It saves a lot of rows when he drives, as then he only hear me moaning about how fast he is going and much distance there is between us and the next car - oh and me telling him if he slowed down I could ask someone for directions....

As I've said, as far as I a concerned, it's not about people who are genuinely frightened, or who have had bad experiences (although another thread could explore why it seems it's only women who feel like this. It's about women who drive to the station to pick their dp up, and he drives home (she can't be that terrified - she drove there, after all). It's women like my friend who offers my dp the keys to her car when she's giving us a lift. It's about women perpetuating the myth that they are fragile little girlies who can't manage that big scary machine and please will Daddy do it for them. Grr.

ANd I DON"T mean people who are genuinely scared, or who make an entirely valid choice not to drive. So please don;t go on about me being dismissive of people who've had horrible experiences. I'm not.

"offers my dp the keys to her car" Now that is really odd

When I passed my test (at the 4th go, and how the examiner ever thought I was confident enough to be let loose on my own I have no idea), I lived at home within walking distance of work. My Dad had a car, my Mum had a car and my brother had a car and they all needed them.

3 cars in the front garden and I could walk to work, so I didn't continue to drive after passing my test, with some relief to myself and in the knowledge that there are probably people alive today who wouldn't have been if I'd gone bumbling about on the roads, then or now. I was happier walking everywhere or going by public transport.

When I married my dh he loved driving, absolutely loved it, and even though I took some lessons to try and boost my confidence, he rarely wanted to relinquish the wheel so that I could have a go whenever I did have a glimmer of thought that 'I could drive on this bit'.

Gradually my confidence faded again. We now live on a really good bus route and close to a train station. I can walk to my parents and to MIL, the nearby nursery and my daughter's friends houses. We just have one car, and can't afford for me to buy an old banger and try again, even if I wanted to, now that he's been made redundant and I'm on a career break.

I have a full licence but no skills left or the confidence to get behind a wheel. People probably think that I'm weird, but I have friends who don't drive either, so it just seems normal to me.

I can remember being on holiday in Normandy in 1984 when the French introduced the 'give way' system on roundabouts. 4pm on the Sunday afternoon, when they were all driving home after very liquid lunches - every roundabout on the Bayeux ringroad had 2 police on bikes just standing and watching. Every motorist shit-scared in case they did the wrong thing.

Funny thing with roundabouts here in France - they have both systems. There are towns in the Limousin where all the roundabouts are only priority a droit, which I find a bit weird. However, about 20km away in Brive there is one roundabout that has - priority a droit, give way and just to round things off, traffic lights.

We have friends and she passed her test in the US, so used to driving on the right. He passed his test in his late 30s, and not particularly keen on driving. However, when they were discussing driving down through France to Spain, she said that she wouldn't do any of the driving. Seems a bit mean to me, as we always shared the driving and navigating.

Stupidly felt really proud when I drove from Limoges to Chester all on my own. Don't know why, but I hadn't been confident that I could do it. Daft really, after driving for 30 years.

Librarylil, I hope I didn't offend you my post. I wasn't referring to people in your situation. Personally I was referring to people who do drive regularly but will refuse to drive somewhere in an emergebcy just because it is a few more miles than their usual distances.

"It's about women perpetuating the myth that they are fragile little girlies who can't manage that big scary machine and please will Daddy do it for them. Grr."

Well that's your opinion and you're perfectly entitled to have it.

i still think the whole thread smacks of smug, self satisfied superiority.

We're all tough, and fragile, in different things and different ways. Some of us can even be tolerant of other people's weaknesses.

IF you had read my post properly, mysticmassueuse, you would have noticed that I specifically excluded people who are phobic or fearful or choose not to drive. But let's not let the facts stand in the way of a good story....

I have read your post seeker, and I think what you describe as "deferring to men when it comes to driving" falls under the category of people who are nervous or just dislike driving. There isn't always a neat separation line between fear and discomfort- I do drive but hate it because I am scared and would always defer to my dh if I have a chance because he likes it, so why should i put myself through the misery if I can help it?

Didn't stop me from driving to the nearest pharmacy in the middle of the night down unfamiliar country lanes when a friend got sick last year and everyone else had been drinking. I did it, despite hating every second of it, because i had to.

My DP loves driving so much that he was incredibly excited about having to drive across Germany this summer with no speed limit on the motorway. He had a ball at 200km/hour...

I just cannot get that interested about driving. I find it really boring and dull. Hence he drives when we are together.

I drive long distances a lot. Frankly there are men who don't like to do it. DH is one. Driving can be pretty boring you know? It's easier sometimes to say 'oh I don't like doing that' than admit you'd rather flip through a bonkbuster from the passenger seat.

However my mum can't drive in the dark because she can't see very well at dusk. Nothing can be done about it, she's safe and legal in the dark and light but dusk is an issue. Should she venture out because it's wussy not to? I think not.

The panic attacks thing, I think is part of a wider problem. If you have panic attacks, driving is likely to be a trigger because for some people, driving is scary because you can't control what everyone else is going to do. I can understand those posters who have said this - though I've never had a phobia myself.

Suis, I think your question was answered by LadyBaBa -- men don't feel they have the option of not driving so you get all sorts of unsuitable men behind the wheel because it's just not macho to say you're nervous about driving; some posters here have said they feel a bit about a man who says out loud that driving isn't his thing)

My mum wouldn't/didn't learn to drive until her late 60s. Up to then she had dad to drive her around, and then friends with cars. She blamed a lot of factors for not driving, and to be fair she had an eyesight problem, but ten years later she has passed all her eye tests for her licence renewals and is still going strong. She is a complete Luddite and lentil weaver, now living in the 21st century, equipped with a lead foot.

She's out there on the roads of south Dublin if you blink you might miss her I'll never forget her excitement when she phoned me to tell me how she had, for the first time in her life, gone grocery shopping when she felt like it, had bought a bootfull of stuff she needed in the big cheaper shop she couldn't have walked to, instead of restricting herself to what she could carry home on the bus, and had come home and got on with her life. I banged my head really hard on the wall or course, but I was happy for her all the same.

"It's about women perpetuating the myth that they are fragile little girlies who can't manage that big scary machine and please will Daddy do it for them. Grr."

You see - I don't get this idea! I just don't like driving. I automatically assume OH will drive when we go anywhere together. I even hand him the keys. I'm not afraid of driving, nor am I incapable. I just don't like it, and I let OH drive because I simply can't be bothered. I don't have any phobias, reasons, or 'valid choices' other than 'I don't want to.

What Seeker should be aware of though is that THIS fragile little girlie who hands the keys to her OH is perfectly capable of managing MUCH bigger scarier machines than the family car. For example, the 170 ton aircraft I fly each day at work.

Why is it such a bother WHAT people's reasons are for not driving? Unless it directly impacts on your life (ie you have a friend who expects you to run them around day in, day out,) it really isn't important!

Precisely bankinthebox.

You know nothing about people's motivations for doing/not doing certain things.

IMO, feminism is about recognising that it's ok to not to do things just because society/other people expects us to, not about bashing other women for their perceived shortcomings. It annoys me no end when it gets used as a justification to feel superior to others.

"It's about women who drive to the station to pick their dp up, and he drives home"

I do this. I am not a fragile little girly I just can't be arsed to drive home and DH would rather drive. Out of all the things to make a feminist stand about this is way down the list of priorities

Being a confident driver does not make you a good driver.

"But I refuse to let it rule my life. I forced myself up The Empire State Building, and had sweaty palms, and vertigo big time...but I did it."

... and presumably that makes you feel empowered, or something. One BiL doesn't like heights, and wouldn't 'force himself' - would just acknowledge it wasn't something he would want to do.

I have no (known) fear of heights, plane travel and so on is fine, and I can swim (enough to save my life, and probably that of others if needed), but even if I won an all expenses paid trip to climb Everest (OK, Snowdon) or go pot-holing, or do some other "out of the ordinary" thing which some people love, I wouldn't be interested.

PS - Backinthebox would happily exchange places (not after a sex change, honest, but to fly a plane!) and well done you for your response - "just don't like it" (or in my case "want to") seems a perfectly valid reason to me, just as I have no interest in driving cars, or motor bikes...

Put me on a snowmobile, water-based craft, or in the air, and I'd certainly "give it a go" whatever the heck it was, though. Nearly had a chance to 'drive' a train (Canada to USA) but you only have speed control, so not the same!

Oh blimey, TMM... I didn't know this was another feminism thread...

someone (she knows who she is) will be after me to chop off my higher pitch balls, any second...

I agree with Seeker. Not slagging off anyone with genuine anxiety (and in my previous post I admitted that I spent years learning to drive in tears as i was so terrified, so I know how it feels).

But we ALL know some lazy slacker who will not drive because she can't be arsed, prefers her husband to do it etc. We have all given lifts to people like this and have bitten our lip.

I also was thinking on another thread the other day about mowing the lawn when loads of people said 'that's a man job'. Why? Just because it is a piece of machinery.

Networkguy, yes, it's another of those threads that use feminism as an excuse to bash other women.

But then, I let the side down by not driving on the motorway, so what do I know? I am just a little woman

although i have panic attacks on motorways as i described above, DH also tends to drive on short journeys too, unless he has been drinking, when we are together.
yesterday i went around to the drivers side and got in (inspired by this thread) and he said, why are you driving, i don't like being a passenger