Rattling the Cage: Park, drive, man, woman

Men behind the wheel get blood in their eyes. Men go on the warpath. Women don't.

Here's a sure way to cut serious traffic accidents down to a small fraction of what they are now: Don't let men drive. In all the words written or spoken about traffic accidents, why doesn't anybody bring up the fact that reckless driving, the kind that causes the really bad smash-ups and the deaths, is almost purely, as they say, a guy thing? When you see somebody on the highway speeding in and out of lanes at 140 kph, or tailgating, honking and blinking you from behind to move over, or, worst of all, racing toward a head-on collision with you by driving suicidally into oncoming traffic to get around a slow-moving truck isn't it always, but always, a man? Have you ever seen a woman do any of those things? I haven't. I probably see men do it every day, sometimes several times a day, and sometimes the man doing it is me. What can I say? I'm one of those people with a penis. I once did a story on Israeli drivers who accidentally kill people, and a woman who runs therapy groups for them told me 90% of the drivers in her groups are men. But you don't need statistics you know this from experience. You see it. The crazy drivers, the real menaces of the road, are nearly all men. Now this is not to say that women are more skilled at driving. No, they're less skilled. The people with vaginas are hesitant, they're fearful, they wait too long at the stop sign, they drive too slow, they don't know what they're doing. But they won't get you killed, as a rule. They may cause a little fender bender. Occasionally women run red lights, which can be really dangerous, but it's because they're daydreaming or gabbing on the cell phone, they're not deliberately being reckless. Men are deliberate. Men behind the wheel get blood in their eyes. Men go on the warpath. Women don't. DO YOU ever see women screaming at each other through the driver's window, threatening to kill each other, then stopping their cars, getting out and actually killing each other? Have you ever heard or read of such a thing? I never have. Only men do it. I haven't killed anybody yet, but I've gotten into hundreds of screaming and snarling matches with men on the road. They scream and snarl back. Women don't, they're too scared, or too sane, they just stare straight ahead and let that maniac (me) pass and hope he crashes into a tree. About the only time you'll see women become predators on the road is in a traffic jam when you want to switch lanes and she won't let you get in ahead of her, and instead she pulls forward to block your move. Whoa, look out. Road aggression at 7 kph. That's about women drivers' speed. Any feminist who still believes there are no inherent personality differences between males and females, that's it all "culture" and "socialization," can either watch National Geographic or go out for a half-hour's drive. Men and women are different. Women are better, okay? They're less stupid, they instinctively put more value on life, usually. They're not the serial killers (except for that one who got the Oscar), men are. They're the ones who should be doing the driving, not men. HOWEVER, THEY'RE not the ones who should be doing the parallel parking. This is obviously a genetic thing, or maybe a physical thing, like urinating from a standing position, women cannot do it, they cannot parallel park an automobile. I confess I like to watch them. If I'm driving, if I'm walking, I stop and take a break for a few minutes (or more than a few), and just take it in. Here we go... back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I try to imagine what she's thinking in the middle of this. "Hmm...what's going on back there... let me see... oops, I've got to check this side... hmm, now the other side is bad again... wait a minute..." And they always try to look so unflappable, so plucky, as if to say to all the boiling-mad drivers backed up behind her, "Don't worry, I can do this, I can solve this problem." No you can't, sister. Give it up. But don't feel bad, it's not your fault, it's the way God made us men can't drive a car without killing someone, and women can't parallel park to save their lives. So who's worse? Obviously men are worse. They have to be curbed, literally. Men should be required by law to sit in the passenger's seat while their wives or girlfriends or sisters or social workers drive. Then, when it's time to parallel park, women should be required by law a much less punitive law, obviously, than the driving law to switch seats and let the man take over. No man or woman should be allowed to get into a car by himself or herself, only with someone of the opposite gender sitting alongside. Also, when it comes time to sit in the passenger seat, the man or woman, whoever's turn it is, should be required to wear a blindfold.