This is potentially a longish post so apologies!
As part of my job, this requires monthly travel to a site two hours away for an all day meeting with the other managers in our department. Until the start of this year, we’d arrange our own hire cars through our company’s partner and this would be an no cost to us. There was always four of us who needed to travel and we would have a car each.
As part of a cost cutting exercise, at the start of this year the policy changed so that we’d be required to share one car. Understandable and no issue.
The problem lies in the fact that of my other colleagues; one has left and wasn’t replaced, the other has an exception to not attend these meetings for the foreseeable future due to a personal matter - which leaves just me and a male colleague.
We’ve had three 4 hour round trips now and I can’t bite my tongue any longer.
I drove on the first occasion and he was critical of my driving, when I dropped him home he said he was glad to make it back in one piece and told me he hasn’t been that scared in a car since divorcing his ex wife who ‘struggled too’. Really rude - I have had no issues when driving and no complaints from anyone else.
To the next two journeys with him - if we are driving through a town and there’s an obviously attractive woman walking along he will slow the car down and blatantly stare at her (including a glance in the rear view mirror once we’ve passed). This makes me really uncomfortable and has happened multiple times across both journeys.
He repeatedly comments on other road users and will say ‘bet that’s a woman’ when he notices a car driving poorly.
The final straw was him opening the front windows and breaking wind really loudly in front of me.
I feel like he has no respect for me and I feel so uncomfortable now.
Would it be unreasonable of me to say I won’t travel with him again and will only attend the meeting if I drive myself there?