TheAA no longer prioritising lone women for recovery

[Imayhaveerred]

A woman tweeted this “ hi @TheAA_UK I am a lone woman whose car has broken down at night in the dark. Your call handler has told me you treat lone women and lone men as exactly the same priority in such circumstances because “that’s equality”

TheAA reply: “Hi Helen, you've been advised correctly. We don't prioritise based on gender, we do consider the location so as an example we would prioritise someone on a motorway over someone in a supermarket carpark”

twitter.com/theaa_uk/status/1483867262373220356?s=21

Surely lone women are always at higher risk than lone men? And that’s before the egregious use of gender when they mean sex…

Finally someone who speaks sense. I'm sick of the whole 'men and women must be treated equally... until it doesn't suit us'

So when men and women are at equal risk of rape or sexual assault if alone, then we can treat them equally when determining how to prioritise help? I’m presuming that’s what you mean because anything else would suggest a frankly unintelligent grasp of the meaning of equality, wouldn’t it?

The problem is people lie to get a quick response .I put good money on if women are proitised if they say they are at risk and they would come sooner I doubt many would say no and volunteer for a longer wait time.

The result of this is a man could broken down on a live lane of a dual carriageway at real risk would be left.

That system would depend on the general public being honest and after working with them for 25 year plus I can assure you there not .

This is a real problem but don't know of any practical answer .

@Hercisback

Statistically men are at greater risk of a random attack so should they be prioritised?

I don't massively disagree with this policy. I'd hope the AA looked at the risk factors of the location of the car.

@Hercisback male on male violence has very different patterns to male on female violence. A lone woman by a road is absolutely more vulnerable than a lone man in the same situation, all other factors being equal.

It was about the posters who said ridiculous a lone female on motorway hard shoulder wouldn't get out

Did anyone say that? I certainly didn’t.

Finally someone who speaks sense. I'm sick of the whole 'men and women must be treated equally... until it doesn't suit us

But being treated equally doesn't mean that the actions are the same to reach that equal treatment. Sure there will be times a man is more at risk due to where they are, but the risk profile of a man and a woman in exactly the same place isn't equal, therefore to have an equal risk profile they need to be prioritised differently.

I had never thought about this before breaking down myself. I was hours away from home as I'd been away with work, broke down in the early hours quite rural, it was terrifying. I locked myself in, stayed on the phone to someone but everytime a car went past I thought please don't stop and the whole time I felt my adrenaline going.

Re: women not liking equality really

It's a warping of the word equal

If men and women were given exactly the same food or clothes is that really equal?

The clothes would fit the man differently to the woman ?
The food would sustain the man and cause the woman to be overweight?

In this case It's not equal if the result is that more women end up hurt or dead as a result of male violence even if the same number of men and women die as a result of traffic incidents

I can remember in the 1980s a woman being murdered after breaking down on a motorway. I think that's when the lone woman having priority system came about.
It's a very sad case, she was 22 years old, and pregnant.

They will have a complex risk calculator, and simply being a woman is not a rational reason to be prioritised, all other things being equal.

A father with a toddler in the car should be prioritised over me (all things being equal). Anyone stuck on the hard shoulder (or worse - in one of the refuges on our smart motorway which no longer has a hard shoulder) should be prioritised over anyone else.

Someone's sex (and please can we have one thread where we don't have to have the gender/sex argument?) should only come into it in certain situations, which I'm sure is built into their risk programme.

Leaving a decent breakdown company simply because they don't drop everything because you're female, is just ridiculous.

^This. It's ridiculous to demand that they always prioritise a woman. There are all kinds of situations/locations where a woman would be safe, and all kinds of situations where anyone (including men) would not be.

I am with the RAC (accadently as it was just the first one I clicked on) and they are great. I hired a car once and it had AA cover which I ended up having to call. They were AWFUL!
Horrendous experiance, had to call a second guy out as the first one was abusive!

But being a woman is a risk factor, so a proper risk analysis should include it

Surely if it was being done on the grounds of risk they could at least say " it's because the additional risk for a lone woman is very small" not present it as some kind of equality

It's ridiculous to demand that they always prioritise a woman.

I don't think anyone is doing that though. Do you think that, other things being equal, there should never be difference at all in prioritisation between the sexes?

That's what the complaint was about - that sex wasn't being considered at all as a risk factor.

I don't think anyone is doing that though.

It certainly seemed to me that some of the posters on that Twitter thread were saying that, yes. And plenty of posts on this thread saying they are shocked that 'lone women are not prioritised'.

If I were a lone woman in a broken down car in e.g. a supermarket car park in broad daylight, I'd absolutely expect a man on a motorway hard shoulder or a man with small children, or even just a man in an isolated location, to be prioritised over me.

Prioritising is not going to the front of the queue, it’s moving up the queue in response to need/vulnerability.

Your call handler has told me you treat lone women and lone men as exactly the same priority in such circumstances because “that’s equality

Just reposting the original text from the OP, as some PPs seem to have gotten themselves confused as to the exact nature of the issue being discussed here and have gotten theirself into a nasty tussle with a lot of straw women.

@SylviaTrench

I can remember in the 1980s a woman being murdered after breaking down on a motorway. I think that's when the lone woman having priority system came about. It's a very sad case, she was 22 years old, and pregnant.

Marie Wilks. It was an awful case. But it was so unusual and shocking that we remember it even today. In the 33 years since she died, at least 1,320 people have died on hard shoulders (actually an underestimate as historic data does not always capture which accidents occurred on the hard shoulder vs main motorway) and many more have had life-changing injuries. There is rarely any coverage of those deaths, so we have a skewed view of the relative risks.

That is absolutely not to say that women are wrong to fear attack when they break down. But, particularly on motorways, they unfortunately have to balance that risk against the risk of being hit by another vehicle.

I’m with the RAC. Despite living in rural Scotland, their breakdown van attended within 20 minutes on both occasions I have called them.
The second time I had a flat tyre on my own driveway, but couldn’t shift the wheel nuts. I told the call handler I was perfectly safe, but their response time was excellent even without priority.
I think being with a large reputable company with fast response times is the important thing, whatever one’s sex.

After my recent experience with the RAC I couldn’t recommend them.

I think they’re probably fine for very simple issues that can be fixed easily on location but the minute your car needs taking to a garage it’s a bit of a nightmare. They book a succession of flatbed trucks, each only covering 65 miles so if you’ve got a long way to go you could have several transfers each taking half an hour.

It’s a far cry from the cosy impression they give that paying their top tariff will get you to your destination in any sort of convenient manner. Our two recovery trucks had no provision to fit a child car seat and the second truck absolutely wreaked of second hand smoke. Driver tried to refuse to wear a mask.

Basically the RAC just act as coordinators for your recovery and you’re at the mercy of whoever they manage to commission.

The 15 mins life expectancy in the hard shoulder is something I also remember from when I worked for the highways agency. I'm sure its probably from a more defined statistic like 'if you stay in your car while adjacent lane is at full speed at night time etc' but just wanted to confirm it was a thing (2010). It's incredibly dangerous to stay in your car if you break down. Always always always get out and move a good distance away from the vehicle.

People are always going to get good or bad experiences. I recently broke down, car completely and totally goosed. Very nice RAC man tried to fix on the roadside (it was a total loser as a key engine part had totally failed) and then towed me to the garage about 20 miles away. I couldn't have praised them enough. and then cried at the repair bill

This thread has taught me that collisions on the hard shoulder of a motorway are particularly common.

I'm of the understanding that a woman being assaulted by a stranger is fairly uncommon, but tragically happens.

I'm actually shocked that people are arguing that anyone on the hard shoulder should be left to hang while someone who is objectively not in imminent danger receives priority.

Of course, in a comparable incident such as breaking down in a populated area, attend the woman first. But the motorway is not in any way comparable to a quiet housing estate.

I can only imagine the carnage if there was a fatal pile up on the motorway. How many women and children would be at risk then?

I'm actually shocked that people are arguing that anyone on the hard shoulder should be left to hang while someone who is objectively not in imminent danger receives priority.

Please give an exact quote, and link for context, where someone has argued that. Otherwise it’s just going to look like you’re talking out of your arse the same as that previous PP who was confused what the argument is about.

@allmywhat

I'm actually shocked that people are arguing that anyone on the hard shoulder should be left to hang while someone who is objectively not in imminent danger receives priority.

Please give an exact quote, and link for context, where someone has argued that. Otherwise it’s just going to look like you’re talking out of your arse the same as that previous PP who was confused what the argument is about.

Erm, it's in the actual fucking OP...

“Hi Helen, you've been advised correctly. We don't prioritise based on gender, we do consider the location so as an example we would prioritise someone on a motorway over someone in a supermarket"
...
Surely lone women are always at higher risk than lone men?

Feminism really confuses me.

Treat me equally. Except when I want to be treated with priority.

There is rarely any coverage of those deaths, so we have a skewed view of the relative risks.

Although I agree with a lot of your points, it does seem like you're using statistics in a misleading way, similar to the "35 year life expectancy" for MTF trans people. As NecessaryScene deduced, is it the case that your "15 or 30 minute life expectancy" is based on average time for all deaths caused by stopping on the hard shoulder, or is it on every person in a car that has stopped on the hard shoulder whether or not there was an accident and whether or not the people were safely recovered?

The 15 mins life expectancy in the hard shoulder is something I also remember from when I worked for the highways agency. I'm sure its probably from a more defined statistic like 'if you stay in your car while adjacent lane is at full speed at night time etc' but just wanted to confirm it was a thing (2010).

Yes it is very dangerous, but that is misleading. A "life expectancy" would involve all use of the hard shoulder at all times. If you are cherry picking the parameters it needs to be acknowledged. False statistics help no one.