To think women are perfectly capable of driving and parking "big cars"?

[Kingcyrolophosarus]

and to hate the casual sexism from male garage workers

Took car to the garage, patronising young guy " would you like me to reverse that out for you?"
No thanks, I've been driving since you were in nappies mate. I've had this car for 5 years, it belongs to me, not my husband. I know how to look after the engine, I know what tyres it takes, and I can fit those tyres by myself

Car hire guy when I was changing a car( for price reasons) "is it too big for you, can't you park it?"

Tyre garage guy
" ooh these are really expensive" proceeds to quote 30% extra
Er, you really think I don't know how much they cost?
I'll go to a garage that doesn't assume I'm stupid thank you

[oldnewmummy]

We hired a big 6 berth motor home recently. DH did all the forwards driving (which was great, as I got to read my book) but every time we got to a camp site he had to get out and let me reverse park it.

[PurplePidjin]

The (classic, air-cooled, tax exempt) Beetle is mine.

Not dp's.

Mine.

He will take great pleasure in directing all questions of any nature to me, no matter how technical.

If you persist in only speaking to him, we will then laugh at you for being such a knobber.

And yes, i can park a 40yo left hand drive car in minimal attempts. I can also park and manoeuvre the T25 camper, which again lacks power steering. Ditto every minibus I've ever driven for work, normally in the company of rowdy teenagers.

[MamaMary]

Actually, maybe I've been lucky - but I've always been treated really well by garage workers round here - and I've been round a fair few.

I can drive and parallel park as well as any man.

A couple of years ago, my DH had broken his hand and I was driving his car. We drove round to a garage to discuss getting new tyres and my DH got slightly peeved that the garage owner addressed the entire conversation to me. Yes, dear - but I was in the driving seat!

SO, YABU

[maddening]

Yanbu I am fab at reverse parking - in fact I prefer to.

I have also driven vans and a box van - which I have successfully reverse parked - I also parallel parked the box van in a tight spot in a busy town centre

[Hamonizer]

I commute an hour to work each way every day and I see a LOT of bad drivers, especially in the evening. The bad drivers I see are both male and female in equal proportions. Unfortunately the women bad drivers are doing dangerous things without realising it. The male bad drivers know exactly what they are doing - and are usually being dangerous purposefully.

Women and men do act differently at times. All people can be idiots.

[TheOriginalLadyFT]

Personally I think a lot of women lack confidence when driving, which doesn't help with things like tricky parking.

I grew up without a father so never had the insidious drip drip negative feed I think is common in many households about how women can't drive blah blah - my mum was/is a very capable driver and so am I (and all my siblings). I can drive large cars, wagons, vehicles and trailers etc and reverse them without any problem - why wouldn't I be able to? After all, I've never found the steering wheel yet which requires the driver to have male not female bits!

[rogersmellyonthetelly]

Yanbu. It pisses me right off when I get comments like this. I drive a landrover discovery which is a right bugger to park, being enormous, box shaped and high bonneted so I can't see where lower cars are. I still manage perfectly well, unlike my husband who can't park it for toffee.
I do have a look that I give to any mechanic/garage person who makes
daft comments. It's a sort of flat expressionless stare which roughly translates as "one more comment like that and I'm going to say something that will make you the laughing stock of all your mates here for years to come" it generally works very well.

[SoniaGluck]

Harmonizer How can you be sure that you're not doing dangerous things without realising it

See, I think that I am a good, safe driver but, according to you, I may be very dangerous on the road without realising it

I mean, who told you that you were so good? Or did you decide for yourself?

[OneLittleToddlingTerror]

It drives me mad too. It's my DH who backed our car into a flower bed and scratched our bumper. I've not got a nick on the car ever. I have my license since I was 16, and I can back up 1) a very slopped curvy drive way around a tree, and 2) a very long driveway around 5 town houses into the carport. Both I did multiple times a day when I lived in Auckland. I have never failed backing into any car park in a multistorey in this country. (Though I've lost my ability to parallel park due to lack of practise here).

I think women generally get a bad rep here because most seem to learn very old. And they are constantly told they can't drive for toffee. A bit like girls used to be told they were stupid too stupid for school/university.

[RobinsonOnTheA24]

I am convinced that the reason lots of women complain of not being able to reverse park is down to the fact that most driving instructors are men, and have (to my female mind) a very peculiar way of explaining how to steer while reversing. I have had several male driving instructors in the past as well as quite a bit of practice with dp and always found reverse manoeuvres a nightmare. Then I got a woman instructor and with one sentence from her the whole thing became unbelievably simple.

When I got home from that lesson I said to dp: "why did you never tell me that when you're in reverse you just look out of the back window and turn the wheel the way you want the car to go?". He said "it would never have occurred to me - surely it's much easier to visualise the arc of direction in which you wish the car to travel and follow that arc etc etc.."

[Acekicker]

YANBU - twice when buying new cars I have been subject to the 'when your husband comes in to buy it' bollocks. One time I pointed out that it was my car bought with my money and DH would occasionally get to drive it if I wasn't using it, however whatever car it was though it wouldn't be coming from their dealership.

The second time I did buy from the dealership (extremely complicated reasons why I didn't stomp out of there like I had with the first dealer) but only after I'd pointed out to the salesman that once again 'my car, my money yadda yadda' but also that unfortunately for him I used to work in the car financing business and given his comments, this seemed like an excellent point to revisit the 'good value deal' he had been trying to fob me off with .

[ICBINEG]

I just hate the fact that there are 'woman drivers' but no 'man drivers'.

I hate the fact that newspapers will always mention the sex of the driver if and only if it is female.

So lets redress the balance....

Man driver of white van knobs up again causing yet another motor way pile up.
Man driver causes accident by flashing headlights at learner at roundabout.
Man driver reverses car into bollard in Sainbury's car park AGAIN.

[LapinDeBois]

YA definitely NBU. Drives me bonkers. DH knows zero about cars and never ever drives when we're in the car together (unless I decide it's my turn to drink). Just ask my two year old: driver's seat is 'mummy's chair', passenger seat is 'daddy's chair'.

Related topic, but it also winds me up when people ask in a concerned voice whether I have a satnav, whenever I have to drive to somewhere new. No, I can use a map FFS and DH would sooner die than allow a satnav in our car.

[Tweasels]

I park better than DH. My next door neighbour teases him mercilessly about it. She always says "shall I get Tweasels to do that for you.

However, I know lots of women who severely lack confidence driving. They will only go certain routes, avoid multi-lane roundabouts, will only park where there is tons of space and even one woman at work who won't turn right. (I'm sure there are men like this too but I haven't met any).

The sexist attitude might cause this lack of confidence in these women, but the lack of confidence feeds the sexism.

[Sidge]

I'm bloody brilliant at parking; always reverse park into spaces (it's so much easier! why do people insist on doing 37 manoeuvers to get a car frontwards into a space?) and parallel park easily. Probably because when I took my test aeons ago (1989) my instructor taught me to parallel park even though it wasn't in the test then.

I once had to park someone's car for them as they were having such trouble getting a Nissan Micra into a standard car park space and a huge queue had built up behind them. The woman looked so relieved when I offered and I thought (but didn't say) that she should be ashamed of driving a car she couldn't park, regardless of it's size.

[noblegiraffe]

I'm afraid I've used 'need to consult my husband' as a way to put off pushy salesmen, when in fact I want to go home and see if I can find something better on the Internet. It seems to be the only thing that will actually shut them up.

[bubby64]

I had to get a part for my car recently, it was the same bit as I had got for the other side of the car only a week previously. DH had rung the store to ask if they had it in stock, and was quoted almost £3 less than I had paid the previous week, and when I went in to collect it, I said "are you sure the price you quoted my DH was correct?" when they confirmed this, I took out their bill of sale from the previous week, and said, "then why did I pay the extra last week for the same part, did it have "bloody stupid woman tax" added to the price?" The bloke went white, then red, then apologised and said I had paid the wrong amount, and gave me the new part for 1/2 price!
Makes me wonder how much extra profit is made by this method every year.
Needless to say, I wont be returning to that store again!

[FreddieMercuryforQueen]

I'm a fantastic driver and Parker. I drive a big Honda CRV and parallel parkit far better than my husband ever could. Which he readily admits himself.

[Startail]

YANBU,
They automatically talk to DH and he automatically answerers (and has been in my bad books afterwards for doing so).

However, I'm very happy to let our local main dealers reverse my car off their forcourt. Even DH, how is a 1000 times better at reversing the me does.

It's a horrible higgledy piggledy mess of expensive cars for sale and other peoples waiting for servicing and they stuff on far more vehicles than actually fit. You might be reversing perfectly safely only to be hit by some one else frustrated by this mess. I'd much prefer any mishaps to be on their insurance.

[Blipbipbeep]

I can park anywhere. I can reverse a car with a trailer, a tractor with a trailer and a horsebox (Lorry).

I once let a man attempt to do it for me and when he completely cocked it up I had to show him how it was done

I can do all this because I had to and I'm very stubborn not because I am female.

I also once changed the engine in my golf GTI, this turned out to be a bit of a mistake. I have to admit that I recently looked at what should be the engine in my car and scratched my head

[WelshMaenad]

YANBU! I drive a big mondeo estate, it used to be my dad 's, and people still seem surprised to see me at the wheel! I can drive it better than DH can. My dad worked in transport, closely associated to the motor industry, and I didn't most if my childhood weekends hanging around in garages watching the Speed Tyre Changing Championships. So whilst I'm
No mechanic I picked up quite a bit of knowledge about cars. I also started driving at 13 round dad's goods yard. He was always adamant that I was never going to become a 'woman driver' stereotype.

I'm the one that always takes the car for repairs and tyres because I get better prices than DH due to being 'Larry's girl".

[anewyear]

My Dh works for himself, hes a mechanic, I dont need to let anyone know what I dont know about cars

I drive a ageing Discovery too, can reverse (I prefer it) park it no problem, thats what the wing mirrors are for

[OneLittleToddlingTerror]

anewyear I'm not a mechanic so definitely mechanics can talk over my head when they tech talk.

My even bigger pet hate is computers. Every time I ring up the ISP help desk or look at computers in the shop, I get the you-are-too-stupid-to-understand look. Just like with cars. But I'm a software developer so I do know way more than you do, tyvm. (I get that from our own companies IT helpdesk. You won't believe some of the BS they tell me just to fob me off).

[Bogeyface]

My ex always used to ask me to reverse park for him as he was crap at it :o