Good news for the petrolhead ladies of Saudi Arabia.
There's plenty of petrol there.
Also, the Saudis are finally catching up with the rest of the planet and letting the ladies drive. Cue sexist comments about more road deaths from ignorant comedians. Also Islamaphobic ones from tossers, which are bound to dredge up this faked photo:
as opposed to this genuine one:
The BBC have the story here. (The Saudi women to drive story, not the Pasta-Colander one) They hope the change in law will be implemented by next June.
I wonder if the Saudi Girls' Council had any influence on the decision? Here they are posing for a photo:
This mildly intriguing headline caught my eye on the Telegraph Motoring site:
Beware the silver Honda – the new menace of our time
Wow. So I read on. I mean, what could be so menacing about a car favoured by the more elderly driver?
Here's the story. The gist is that a recent survey has found that British people find the type of car that commits the most offences is a silver Honda. That is their wording by the way - I know that the drivers commit the offences - not usually the cars.
I suppose that there could just be one very prolific bad driver out there who lives near to where the survey was conducted and who happens to have a silver Honda.
Apparently, Audi drivers – who I would have put top – came top in just two
areas: tailgating, and pulling out too slowly from junctions. Tailgating most definitely and replace the word "slowly" with "quickly" and I'll agree the second point too.
So I decided to try and find out a bit more about the survey, described in the story as being "compiled by Privilege car insurance".
I couldn't find that survey but I did find a link to this Mirror story from July. This stated that Lincoln and Portsmouth were the worst British cities for road-rage and that "Men aged 69, 79 and 50 are the top three worst offenders while women aged 39 are fourth most likely" I turn 50 next year and my in-laws live in Manchester which came 10th in the city category so I'll need to be extra careful when visiting them for Christmas 2016. This is all "according to a study by insurance firm Privilege."
I also found a link to a Huffington Post story from May declaring that "Women Are Better Drivers Than Men, According To A New Survey." Clearly wrong, but that's beside the point - guess who the survey was by. If you just guessed Aviva, re-read this post and try again.
I guess it must be cheaper to conduct a quick survey and send it as a story to a media outlet than to do good old-fashioned advertising.
The Mail are throwing some shocking statistics at us today. Apparently "The number of households with four or more cars has soared by 51 per cent to nearly half a million over the past decade."
So now "Families with four or more cars now account for nearly 1 in 50 of all households"
Scary eh? That means we are now down to just over 98% of households that don't have four or more cars. And given that some of those with four or more cars will be Richard Hammond, Wayne Rooney, Chris Evans and the like - I don't think we should be panicking just yet.
So it's another non-story from the Mail with a picture that bears no relevance to the non-story:
Those children aren't old enough to drive, let alone clog up the driveway with cars. The driver is, I think, a man. It's hard to tell from that photo but the front-seat passenger is definitely female. I can't imagine the Mail would be promoting a lesbian family scenario so I'll assume it is a bloke. Why am I bothered about the sex of the driver? I'm not really, except the bloke who wrote the article seems to be blaming the increase in the number of working women and, therefore, women drivers for the extra driveway congestion.
Pillock.
Some of The Mail readers' comments are just as daft but, to fair, the daftest ones are receiving the most red down-arrows and the least daft are receiving the most green up-arrows.
The dubious one I have picked out is from K.Sera of London who tells us, "I have Range Rover, Maserati and several motorbikes in my garage, but I usually walk or hop on the tube. Taxis for nights out. But if I need to drive somewhere, I know I have transport. So, despite having several vehicles, I hardly drive. When I had just one car, years ago, I used to drive all the time."
Assuming he's telling the truth (which I don't) why mention it if he only has two cars?
Pillock.
Anyway, this is nothing new. Even back in the 1970s, your average Daily Mail reader was being disturbed while trying to enjoy a quiet Sunday morning washing his Austin Maxi:
The Telegraph had this story today, but not in its motoring section. It's about how the mayor of the German town of Triberg has "courted controversy by allocating so-called easy parking spaces to women"
Controversial!
It is probably a publicicty stunt - he does try to imply this when interviewed - but it will bring back once more the old arguments about who makes the best driver.
Their motoring section does cover this woman driver though: Although it is the bloke who was in the passenger seat who is an idiot - albeit a lucky one.
What Car? are reporting that the EU is to outlaw discrimination against men when it comes to setting motor insurance premiums. I've always felt a bit miffed that women get cheaper insurance than men just because they cost less in claims. I haven't said they crash less because I'm not convinced that they do - they just do less damage because they are travelling much slower when they do it.
This is a point I made last Summer when my good blogging friend North of the Border commented in his Blog about poor driving. To quote me last July, "Surely cheaper insurance for women should fall foul of sex descrimination laws? What would happen (and the data must exist) if they started basing premiums on skin colour?"
I am still uneasy about this though, since if they are not allowed to take into account the risk on sex-grounds, will it go further and they won't be able to discriminate against the higher-risk groups like sportsmen and entertainers? Or people who live in inner-city crime hotspots? Or Mexicans?
The main reason for me to comment though is as an excuse to embed this:
