On Driving

I am an embarrassment to my gender. Yes, I’m admitting it – despite all that we know about equality and ability, I let the side down by being a crap driver.

It’s not driving itself that causes me problems. I’m a careful and attentive driver (most of the time, anyway!) and haven’t experienced any problems navigating or getting myself from A to B. What gives me trouble is anything that involves spatial awareness. I just don’t know where the edges of my car start.

When I first got my licence (I was a late starter, not even taking lessons until I was in my mid-twenties), I was fresh from hours of practicing manoeuvres under the watchful eye of my instructor, Laurence, who was close to retirement age and probably hoped I was his last client. It took him months to get rid of me, and I’m sure I saw tears of relief in his eyes when I finally passed my test on the third attempt. Laurence was a great instructor with a lot of patience, and he taught me to parallel park swiftly and accurately and to reverse into spaces and around corners with no trouble at all. I finally passed my test in his little Nissan Micra, and thought that everything was done and dusted.

Sadly for me, I had failed to take into account the fact that my own car was considerably larger than Laurence’s. As soon as I was left to my own devices I dropped the ball. Laurence had shown me how to detect the edges of his car from my position in the driver’s seat, but had failed to make me understand how to transfer that knowledge to a different vehicle. Sitting in my brand-new four-door saloon rather than his dinky little hatchback, I soon foundered. In fact one of my very first solo jaunts resulted in my smashing the passenger side wing mirror as I backed through our driveway gate. 

Things soon went from bad to worse. My parallel parking skills stayed with me for a while – I distinctly remember impressing my boyfriend mightily by nipping into a very tight space on a busy shopping street with nary a pause – but it didn’t take long for me to lose confidence. The straw that broke the parking camel’s back, so to speak, was when I got trapped in the car park at Sainsbury’s supermarket. However I managed it, I pulled into a parking space at an angle, attempted to straighten up, and somehow edged myself to within inches of the car to my right. Not only could I not squeeze out my door but I could not reverse the car out of the space either – its rear end was even closer to the neighbouring car than the front end was, and I was terrified of damaging somebody else’s vehicle. So there I had to stay, for several minutes until the person who had parked nose-to-nose with me came out of the supermarket and drove off. With their space freed up, I was able to drive straight out without doing any more reversing. 

Not long after I got married, my husband and I went to visit friends. The visit was wildly successful until they waved us goodbye, at which point I reversed into their neighbour’s fence and broke it. I also punched a square-shaped hole in the back bumper, but that barely mattered because of the other scrapes it had accumulated; the broken fence, however, was an embarrassment.

That little misadventure led to what has now become something of a phobia about reversing in general and parking in particular. Because I rarely drive anywhere and the roads in New Zealand tend to be wide with lots of parking space, it’s not really an issue, but I will go out of my way to find a spot that I can just drive straight into with no manoeuvring, and then have to walk back to wherever I was actually meant to be. However, sometimes I just have to deal with what I’ve got.

My husband and I own a car that has had several previous owners since its manufacture in 1994, but despite that it was in very good condition when we bought it nearly two years ago. Now it’s a sorry sight. When I had no choice but to park in a busy hospital car park I somehow drove into a wall, scraping the paint off the front left bumper. Reversing out of a small space when we went to choose carpet for our house, I hit a bollard and took most of the paint off the back right bumper. Conversely I have also (frequently) parked several feet away from whatever I’m trying to avoid, leaving me practically in the middle of the road in some cases and at wildly unsuitable angles in others. I do my best, but I just don’t know where the air stops and the car starts.

I know I’m not stupid and I’m well able to understand technical details (I’ve got an IQ of 156 and a degree in computer science), but my brain just cannot grasp the seemingly simple concept of spatial awareness. Millions of people, men and women, park their cars every day without removing half their paint in the process. So why can’t I?

Please note that this is a rhetorical question, and any helpful instructions from my male readers on what I should be doing will be read, understood, but immediately forgotten when it comes to the point where I should put them into practice. I’ve had fantastic instructions (from the trusty Laurence) already but still can’t seem to manage to get it right when I’m on the road. I’ve come to accept that my otherwise reliable brain just doesn’t do well in this area. Luckily for me, my husband is well on his way to getting his own driving licence and he already does most of the driving when we’re together. Maybe I can live without this skill.