Women drivers are the stuff of legend. But I am not going to write about them.
Instead, I am going to write about female pedestrians. Men have always assumed that some women make bad drivers because they are either mechanically inept ( so they have no feel for machinery), or they have poor spatial management skills (meaning they wander all over the road) or they fear driving (and thus drive like grannies).
I don't subscribe to any of those theories anymore. I have come to the conclusion that some women make bad drivers because they think they can multi task.
I saw a TV show some years ago where they got men and women to attempt to perform 7 tasks in 3 minutes - things like ironing a shirt, making a cup of coffee, answering the front door etc. Men were completely hopeless at doing many things at once, but women managed to get most of the tasks done in the allocated time. The conclusion was that because of babies, women were biologically attuned to multi tasking. Men are more single minded - go out and spear a giraffe for dinner. Do not stop to admire the scenery. Do not stop to pick flowers. Do not stop to make a necklace out of pretty coloured stones. Do not use the hunting trip as an excuse to catch up on fireside gossip. Just go out, find a giraffe and poke it with a sharp stick. Bring back chops for dinner.
Being single minded is pretty important when it comes to getting big jobs done. Men make good bricklayers for instance because they are happy to go to work and just lay bricks all day. That's how houses get built. If you laid 10 bricks, then pottered off to build a door frame, then laid some more bricks, then went and cut some pipes for the bathroom, the house would never get build in time. There are times when a monomaniacal focus is preferable to a multi tasking approach.
Driving is one of them.
You can't drive, chat on the phone, play with the radio, do makeup and expect to get to work everyday without collecting a few dents in the car. The drivers I most hate being a passenger with are those that lack focus on the task at hand - driving the damned car. Getting me from A to B alive is the primary task - everything else is secondary. Some people though treat the driving as secondary and many other tasks take priority - like taking your eyes off the road and chatting with every other passenger in the car, or rummaging through a purse for something whilst driving at 110 km/h.
Enough about driving. I was supposed to be writing about pedestrians.
Most days, my cycle to work takes me around a stretch of Sydney water known as The Bay. For those with a bit of Sydney knowledge, the suburb of Drummoyne is on one side and Lillfield/Rozelle are on the other. The three different councils that butt up against The Bay have managed to agree on something for once, and that is the development of cycle and foot paths around the waterfront. It is a really nice place to get your exercise.
Each council has a different approach to infrastructure. My council has done a great job by building nice, wide separate foot and cycle paths. The pedestrian path is coloured black whilst the bike path is red. The bike path has nice big bike symbols painted on it every so often. There are signs at regular intervals pointing to bicycles riding on the path on the left and pedestrians walking on the path to the right.
Women of course seem oblivious to all of this and they walk wherever they want.
I did a headcount each morning some months ago and found that 9 out of 10 pedestrians in the morning were women, whilst 19 out of 20 cyclists in the area were men. The split was so dramatic that the council should get out the tins of paint and repaint the pedestrian path in pink and the bike path in blue. The other part of the great divide is that most of the cyclists seemed to be heading to work, whilst the pedestrians were out doing a lap of the Bay for exercise, and would presumably go home, shower and then drive to work. Most cyclists are solitary (although you do see the odd couple riding into town together), but many of the pedestrians are doing it in pairs, threesomes or packs of 4 or more. Walking is a social gathering as much as anything.
The trouble with these social gatherings is that they amble along like snails and they walk along the clearly marked bike path and they fill it completely from one side to the other. They leave no room to overtake.
They are rude, blithering idiots. They are anti-social morons. I don't understand why they think they can ignore the "rules of the road" as soon as they step out of their cars. They have the common sense of poodles, which is not a lot. They also have the road sense of emus. Emus are not the best thing to meet out on the open road because they tend to be completely unpredictable. One will be standing in the middle of the road, and as you drive towards it, it will turn and run off the road. Good. Then it will turn around and run back across the road in front of you. Sometimes, they will run alongside your car and then decide to take a short cut across your path. The really stupid ones will turn and run into the side of your car.
Some of these pedestrians are no different. If you call out "Passing on your right" as you come up behind them, they'll jump to their right and force you to brake hard or run into the shrubbery. Others will continue to stroll along blocking your path, with their head swivelling left and right with a puzzled look on their face of "what on earth is a bike doing on this path?" They will of course be walking over a big painted bike symbol as they think this. They seemed to be stunned by the fact that cyclists would actually cycle along a marked cycle path.
They also have the amazing spatial ability to walk in such a way to consume the entire width of the bike path. Men also walk on the bike path, but they tend to walk close together and they hug the left hand side, thus giving you room to pass on their right. Two women though will draw an imaginary line down the middle of the path, and then walk either side of it, leaving no room to pass on either side or down the middle. They seem to unconciously know how to inflict the maximum infuriation on men. It is a finely calibrated ability to be incredibly annoying whilst acting innocent and dumb.
Many also have no idea what the ringing of a bell means. I have come up on many a couple and noticed that the male has spotted or heard me coming and has grabbed his partner and physically hauled her out of the middle of the path and over to the side where he is walking. Most men seem to be taking some notice of their surroundings, and are not just taking an interest in a bubble of space 10 feet in front of them and nothing else. Cripes, the number of people that amble along and don't look where they are going, or noting what is coming towards them makes me wonder how some people have survived into middle age.
To cap it off, I have occasionally pointed to the pedestrian path as I have ridden past these fools - a nonverbal way of saying, "The path is over there, so why don't you walk on it you idiot", and have been roundly abused for my troubles. They know they are doing the wrong thing, but they get absolutely infuriated when it is pointed out to them. They swear and carry on like they own the road, and I have no right to be riding on the cycle path.
They should be strapped into shopping trolleys and pushed into the Bay. They shit me to tears.
I think the problem is caused by multitasking. These women think they can walk and talk at the same time. Unfortunately, they can't.
What they fail to realise is the difference in speed between walking and cycling. They are doing 5-6 km/h. I am doing 30-35 km/h. I am covering about 9 metres per second. With them walking towards me, the closure rate is 10 metres per second. Given that most of them spend all their time looking at each other, or the ground a few feet in front of them, they get 2 seconds warning at most if I am approaching from the front. Especially if they are listening to an iPod or yapping on the phone. I have found that ringing my bell from a distance is useless, as they don't seem to hear it. I've got to get close before yelling or belling a warning. iPod users seem to become aware of me when I am about 5 metres away, which generally gives them a hell of a shock. Even after the shock however, they continue to walk on the cycle path.
Experience teaches them nothing. Will they ever learn?
Don't get me started on the mums with prams though........
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