Eric Thompson: Ban women from driving 4x4s

Before I get into my tirade about women drivers I want to make it abundantly clear I do not want women banned from driving - just banned from ever sitting behind the steering wheel of a 4x4 off-road vehicle.

Before I get into my gripe, I'd like to relate a story which happened when I was living in the UK to illustrate that it's not just Kiwi women I'm on about.

First up though, can any one out there please explain why there's a need to drop little Johnny and Suzie off outside the school gates in a whopping great humongous beast of a thing built for competing in the Dakar rally. It's a bit like trying to explain life, the universe and everything. Maybe it's a bling thing - the bigger, naffer and more ostentatious the better.

Anyway, back to the story. My next-door neighbour in Bishops Stortford was a cool dude who didn't suffer fools lightly - in fact he didn't suffer them at all. On returning to Stortford one afternoon on the narrow back lanes that surrounded the town he was confronted by a woman driving a large off-road vehicle coming in the opposite direction.

Said woman was pottering along slap bang in the middle of the road - and wouldn't move over to let Andy by. He yelled out the window for the woman to reverse back to a passing bay about 200 metres behind her. She refused to, saying she didn't know how to reverse the 'big car' and didn't want to anyway, and he'd have reverse back. There wasn't a passing bay behind Andy for well over a kilometre.

Having a fairly stubborn streak, he sat just sat in his car and started to read the paper. The woman had a hissy fit and started to get all flustered.

Andy got out and asked her if her car was an off road vehicle to which she replied "yes".

"Well get the f'n thing off the road then," came the rapid reply. After more tears the woman finally realised Andy wasn't going to budge and slowly pulled over onto the muddy grass verge and edged past.

Andy only had a small Peugeot 205 and would have become bogged down if he had gone onto the grass and mud. His point was, if you don't know how to drive something you shouldn't be driving it.

This summer, similar things have happened to time and time again, and in each instance it was a woman driving. I go surfing at Tawharanui and to get to the beach you have travel over about 11 kilometres of gravel road which, in places, is quite narrow.

I always leave before the Aucklanders arrive to hog everything, and the trip out is like handing your life to idiots. They either barrel along at about 60-70km/h, or crawl along at 5km/h slap bang in the middle. Of course, they won't move over to allow cars coming in the opposite direction to pass.

On one occasion I was almost shoved over the edge by a woman in a black Porsche Cayenne who wouldn't move over, and another time one of them just sat right in the middle of the road and wouldn't move over - too worried about scratching the car she told me, and it was her first time on the road so I should reverse back so she could pass.

Needless to say that wasn't an option and eventually with tears in her eyes, a bunch of screaming children and a number of cars honking behind her, she did indeed manage to get past with easily enough room to fit a tank.

I'd have to say the women that drive these large 4x4s on narrow gravel roads for the first time are not only a menace to other users but negligent with their children.

Who in their right mind would put their children in vehicle they don't know how to operate properly on a road surface they've never driven on before. Is it arrogance or stupidity? I'll let you decide.