Name: Male drivers.
Age: Anywhere between 17 and 100+.
Appearance: Not female enough.
Oh God, are we heading into the culture wars? Relax, we’re in firmly uncontroversial territory here.
Great. Which is? Men should drive more like women.
Oh no. If it helps, it’s specifically that French men should drive more like women.
I’m not sure that does help, but says who? Says the French safety awareness organisation Victimes & Citoyens (Victims and Citizens), which has just unveiled a series of posters that read: “Conduisez comme une femme.” In other words, drive like a woman.
But why? Have you ever tried to drive around the Arc de Triomphe? It’s basically 4 million angry Frenchmen doing their best to fatally injure themselves and everyone around them.
That seems like a problematic generalisation on multiple levels. There are statistics to back this up, if this helps. According to the French government, 84% of fatal road accidents and 93% of drink-driving crashes in France are caused by men. The French are said to be among the most aggressive drivers in Europe: 91% routinely break the speed limit, 65% use their phones while driving, and 32% admitted to deliberately “hitting” the vehicle of a driver that annoyed them.
But if they drove like women? Then they would be broadly more considerate and less aggressive, and the 3,000 road deaths that France experiences each year would fall.
Wow, those darn Frenchies, huh? Calm down. A Guardian analysis in 2022 revealed that male drivers in the UK are almost three times as likely as women to be involved in accidents that kill or seriously injure pedestrians.
For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m American. In 2021, male drivers were involved in 72.3% of fatal crashes on US roads. Wherever you go, men cause more serious road accidents than women.
So how do we all drive like women? Be really timid and meek? If you mean more cautious and less aggressive, then yes. Slow down, be patient, leave a sensible gap between you and the car in front of you, that sort of thing.
But then it would take longer to get where I’m going. Yes, but you and the people around you would all get there alive, which seems like a decent trade-off.
This is wokeness gone mad! Yes that’s right. Me and the rest of the woke police have all got together and decided that not murdering thousands of people with cars is woke now. Please update your records accordingly.
Isn’t there anything I can do like a man? I mean, protecting your family by not tailgating a Vauxhall Mokka at 85mph while beeping your horn and screaming swearwords does actually seem quite masculine, but you do you.
Do say: “Drive like a woman.”
Don’t say: “Can’t wait for the healthy discourse this inspires.”
