WOMEN MOTORISTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 137, 11 June 1936, Page 19

WOMEN MOTORISTS

EXPERTS' CRITICISM

Women motorists all over Britain —and there are about a million of them—are indignant over the opinions expressed of their driving capabilities by individual experts and insurance companies (states a correspondent of the "Sydney Morning Herald"). They have been condemned, in some instances, for having no "motor sense, and in others for being unduly "nervous." Yet, out of the gloom, there is shed a ray of light. The Automobile Association, which keeps careful records affecting its hundreds of thousands of

"Sport and General" Photo. PARISIAN FASHIONS. — Jane Regny is responsible for the smart cocktail suit shown above. It is made in navy blue silk with a printed design of small flowers in rose, yellow and violet colourings. The fashionable short coatee has a flared basque, worn over a yellow georgette blouse. On right, a smart dinner gown in thin silk georgette ~ worn over a tunic made only knee length. Elbow sleeves give a smart effect, and the quaint neck-line finishes at the back of the neck £ with a huge bow. c — —• s members, states definitely that it is j. favourably impressed by the "increasing self-reliance and technical knowLedge" ol women drivers. r R.A.C. OPINION. t And to this verdict the Royal Auto- \ mobile Club assents. The club con- r siders that "women are overwhelming- c [y better than men, so far as sum- v monses and accidents are concerned. A, representative went so far as to make the following statement:—"Weeks go by without a woman member of the R.A.C. claiming legal defence for an iccident or summons. Women, perhaps, have a sense of inferiority on the road, t and, therefore, avoid taking risks. Un- r doubtedly, women are less liable to t police prosecution." I "Women do not drive to anything like c the same extent as men in heavy j traffic. Many leave their cars outside E London and complete the journey by £ underground. Nor do they undertake £ the long journeys that men do." t But the insurance companies are not t so kind. Their view is that men are < far more efficient motorists than wo- j men. Women applying for policies are A "regarded in a less favourable light," ] and their past driving experience and record are considered much more care- , fully than in the case of _men. The s companies are unanimous in their be- j lief that, as a general rule, the accidents ] in which men are involved are usually i more serious, but that .women's are ] more frequent. LORRY DRIVER'S VERDICT. Listen, also, to a lorry driver, accustomed to all sorts of traffic on the highways. "Women," he declares, "are bad drivers, though I wouldn't lump them all together as such. But I would rather pass a string of buses or lorries than one woman in charge of a car. You never know what they are going to do next. They like to stick in the middle of the road, and seem frightened of drawing in to the side to let anyone past. They stop when you least expect it, seldom give a signal, and seem never to know their own minds." Lastly, this is what a typical policeman on point duty thinks: Women are "too slow off th,e mark, and stare too much." If anything attracts their notice —a friend or a shop window they forget their car, and, as often as not, hold up the traffic. But the younger ones are not so bad as their older sisters, in fact r some of them are smarter than men at "getting oil the mark." "CONVERSATION TEST" A New Yorker who runs a "Charm" school has been trying to find out what women talk about, states an exchange. She has made a "conversation test" of 10,000 women in all parts of the United States. And this is her conclusion: The average girl between the ages of 17 and 20 can talk at length on four subjects only—men, make-up, the movies, and schooldays. From 20 to 30 a woman extends her conversational scope. Popular topics of her talk are aviation, diet, % the next war, politics, Communism, modern art, and conditioning. She says, too, that women don't talk nearly as -much as they used to about babies, about sex, about drink, about bridge, and about housekeeping.