How To Drive A Motorcar
A Key To The Subtleties Of Motoring

 HOW TO DRIVE A MOTORCAR Really this charge, whether admitted or denied, should not be looked upon as anything derogatory to the fair sex; it is purely a matter of Nature’s ordinances, and with these we have no quibble. It may be granted tliat many ladies are as courageous and as capable as men, and, even further, the writer is inclined to think that when once a lady has thoroughly mastered a car she is a more considerate driver, from the car’s point of view, than a man. Still further on the credit side of the fair sex, the writer will readily confess that some lady drivers whom he has met were considerably above the average male driver, not only in regard to the question of considering other road users, but also in their ability to drive. How- ever, in cases when an emergency does arise, whether the emergency in question be a small one or a serious one, the whole of the writer’s experience in the past 15 years, and also information gleaned from other reliable sources, tend to prove that action has not been so instantaneous as it would have been with an equally capable male driver. Naturally, constitution has a good deal to do with it, and in the case of the fair sex a driver is either born for the work or not, in a more marked degree than in the case of a man. It would be futile to endeavour to analyse the why and wherefore of the statement, or even to produce arguments to substantiate it, and thus endeavour to prove it a fact. There is a something in the construe tion of human beings which varies with the sex, allow- ing the mere male to act more quickly in any surprise engendered by an emergency than one of the gentler sex. It may be that the knowledge possessed by the lady under consideration in some supposed emergency is greater than that possessed by a similarly imagined man; it may also be that she will be braver and face the situation more boldly ; it is even conceiv- able that she may see what ought to be done more quickly than one of the other sex, but even granting all this, the writer still maintains that she is not so likely actually to do it in eo short a space of time as a man. 120