Since we're talking about humor this month AND since we're all in the convertible together, I thought I'd combine the whole car theme with grins and offer up this little gem of a video. I have watched it more than once and each time I laugh out loud.
So take a look - then come back and answer my question :o)
CAUTION: if you're watching at work, there is sound so you might want to turn it down a bit - but the music REALLY adds to the grins.
So - obviously, they were picking on women drivers here - but also obviously, these women needed to be picked on! So, how are YOUR driving skills. Did you see yourself in any of these little scenarios? Are you a PRO parker or are you like me and the woman who FINALLY had to have a man help her out? :o) Oh, the horror!!
31 comments:
I can parallel park but sometimes it takes a few tries. When we lived overseas, I not only had to parallel park in front of our apartment building, I had to do it on the left side of the road. After 4 years I was quite good. Now I don't have to do it very often.
I don't back into parking places very well. And I hate backing OUT of a parking place because I drive a low-profile vehicle and invariably I'll have a big SUV on either side and am backing out blind.
I can't believe the woman in the Mercedes who hit the parking garage arm or the one who clipped the gate and rolled her van. When I stop at a ticket booth or at the ATM, I always put the car in park and pull up the emergency brake. We had an incident here where a woman didn't and ended up down an embankment by the ATM machine. Sometimes common sense needs to prevail.
Now let's find a video of bad men drivers. ::grin::
Marilyn
Oh, dear. I'm paranoid of hitting other vehicles or my own, so I don't see myself rolling my car because I clipped a wall or running over ticket things.
The lady trying to back in? I would have given up after the 3rd or so try out of sheer embarrassment.
Parallel parking? cringe!. I don't have to do it that often and when I do, I look for 2 spots next to each other so I can get in. Every time I have to do this, I have a little dream for a MINI Cooper. Oh, how I want one!
Hubs says I ride my brakes too much and that I give him whiplash at every red light. But I don’t share that problem, so I’m thinking he just doesn’t know how to properly sit in a car :O)
I can parallel park with a great deal of time. I'm especially good if it's a double spot, LOL! But my new SUV has an indash camera that shows the space in back of me and I get lights and sounds when I'm five feet, then 20 inches from a car. I love it! It helps compensate for my lack of depth perception!
Very funny, Cindy!
There's a saying at my house. Mom's great driving on the freeway, but man can she do some damage in a parking lot!
Nuf said.
Cindy, I laughed and laughed at that video. Perfect examples of how anything that CAN go wrong WILL. Thanks for the chuckles.
Personally, I'm a good parallel parker. Having failed my very first driver's test because I had never parallel parked I my LIFE (thanks, Dad), I went on to actually practice it and passed the second time with flying colors. I still prefer head-on or slant parking, but I'll parallel if I have to.
On the other hand, I've been behind people in parking lots that made me want to get out of my car and offer to park it for the person ahead of me. There's nothing more infuriating than watching somebody try again and again to make a parking place. . . while you're waiting for a space of your own!
Add that to the number of women who say they don't trust driving on cruise control. . . that they're too afraid they'll hit the gas instead of the brake when they need to stop. . . and I do have to wonder about my fellow females' driving skills. I LUUUUUVVVVV my cruise control!
Marilyn
Ah, parallel parking. I can do it too and sometimes I can even do it on the first try. Why do I always feel like I won an Olympic medal, though when I manage to get really close to the curb? :o)
Keri - I hear you on the 'hubby' advice. My hubby's favorite when I'm driving is,"Will you just pick a lane and stay there, please?" Where's the fun in that, I ask???
Kylie -
You have the ultimate bells and whistles car. last car I ALMOST bought had a camera on the dash that showed everything behind you. I kind of liked that idea but in the end I passed for the in dash navigation. :o)
Helen
Glad you got a chuckle. And I've ridden with you. You're a great driver! Well, if you don't count that time you side-swiped that woman trying to get to the Chippendale dancer. Oh wait. That was INSIDE the casino and you were on foot. But you sure had your racing stripes on.:o)
Betina - The first time I drove a car in drivers ed, I put it in the ditch. Made a really good impression on my instructor.:o0. but I did get my license on the first try. Wonder what that says about Iowa standards??
Yeah, I'm there. I've crunched more than a couple of my own fenders. I'm a terrible backer, for one thing. My depth perception leaves a lot to be desired. But I try to keep this stuff in mind and not add myself any more than necessary to roads already clogged with bad drivers of both genders. I really don't like to drive. But I've had maybe 2 traffic tickets in my life, and my goofs haven't involved anyone but me--knock on wood.
In defense of our gender, I googled DUI stats and came up with:
Male drivers involved in fatal crashes were nearly twice as likely to have
been intoxicated (21.8%) than were females (11.2%). (NHTSA, 1996)
Men are four times more likely than women to drive after drinking (Miller
et al, 1996c)
Nearly a third of males (31%) drive after drinking in the past year,
compared with only 13% of females. (NHTSA, 1996)
One anecdote from my early days: Less than a year after I got my license, I had to park Mama's car in a dept store lot at night, Christmas crowding. Wide car, narrow space. Kept trying to re-situate, but I only made it worse. I ended up so close on the driver's side (literally a hair's breadth) I couldn't move. I had to crawl out the other side. A kind witness came to my rescue. Without laughing or berating, SHE backed the car out beautifully.
Anecdote 2: My first BTW lesson, I hit the gas instead of the brake at a red light. Thank God for the instructor's pedal. But we were required to learn and test on a stick shift in those days because there were so many manual transmissions on the road. I know the instuctor expected me to fail the test. Passed with a perfect score. I test well. The other student in the car that day--excellent driver--almost failed. She really needed her license, and she was very nervous. Shaking toward the end because she'd made so many mistakes. I felt terrible for her. The tester actually told her he was taking the instructor's word that she really was a good driver.
Kathy - crawling out the passenger side door, huh?? Been there. Done that.
As to the DUI's leaning toward men. I wonder how many accidents can be attributed to young girls chatting on their cell phones?? So much to watch for these days in the defensive driving category.
Speaking of driving and cell phones - do you all drive and talk? I have to raise my hand on that one BUT I will say that I have blue tooth capability in my car so it's completely hands free. I don't even have to have the blue tooth thingy in my ear. I just tell June (June is my onboard navigator) whose number i want dialed and she does the rest. Love it.
Give me enough TIME and I can parallel park, but it's not usually worth the effort.
My husband can park anything, anywhere. Parallel parking is a matter of seconds. He has some sort of weird spatial relativity gene or something!
Mine too, Deb. We have this huge horse trailer he pulls behind the pickup and he can park that thing anywhere. I don't get it. you have to turn the wheel the opposite way you want the trailer to go or something. And this sucker is like 32 feet long. It's like astro physics to me trying to figure out how he does it.
DON'T get me back onto the Chippendales, Cindy. For every story you make up about me, I can come up with another one on you!! lol
I am a good driver, Cindy, and I can parallel fairly easily, but parking lots are my nemesis. I've backed into mailboxes, the garbage can, hit a friend's lamp post while backing out of the driveway and sliced off a side mirror.
Unfortunately, my dear, sweet, lovable daughter may have inherited this trait. She came home from work one day, pulling onto the side of the driveway, hit the gas instead of the brakes and plowed right into the closed garage door. She hit the boat and pushed it all the way into the back of the garage.
I was at my computer working when it happened and the entire house shook! Poor honey.
Cindy- I wouldn't even attempt a trailer. Yeeks! Maybe the guys like the challenge of it and spend more time doing that sort of thing as they are gathering their driving chops.
I, on the other hand, spent a lot of time going around the block until I could find a curb space I could glide into.
I...am aces at the 'round the block parking maneuver.
Helen and Deb - you are women after my own heart. i can relate with all of your 'episodes'. :o)
And okay, Helen. Uncle. No more Chippendale stories. Deal????
Deal? Hmmm, maybe. Maybe not.
Muuuaaaw!!!
Hate to break it to you, but the idiot in the video who drove the car into the pit at the oil change place was a MALE! My kids played me the video on youtube and I about peed myself laughing until I realized that most of the "men" working at those places are 16 - 17 year old boys. Kinda scary to hand your keys over to them, huh? My boyfriend in college didn't know how to drive a stick until he went to work at Jiffy Lube in high school - he basically learned to drive a stick by grinding paying customers' transmissions into submission :)
GunDiva - YEA!! Let's hear it for 16 year old boys who can't find their way onto the track at the carwash. And there may have been some pants peeing at my house too the first time I saw this. :o0
Hellen
Muuuuwwwwaaaa
Wait until D.C. :o0
OMG! That was too funny!
I still can't believe that woman actually FLIPPED her van!
Magolla - I know. that one REALLY cracked me up.
In CA, we can't drive with hands-on cell phones anymore...though I still see it all the time. It's always the people driving weird, too.
I'm a good driver, but both Surfer Guy and I have hit the side corner of our carport more than once. Very weird angle. C'est la vie.
I will admit that Surfer Guy is probably the better navigator in tight spaces, but I'm a better defensive drive. I had a long commute in traffic at one time and I learned well.
Those videos are hysterical!
I woke my husband I was laughing so hysterically at this.
My only accident was backing up - it was night and there were cars coming and I had to back up this one street at a school before another car came - I thought I was going straight but ran smack into a cement based light pole on the other side of the rooad. When I got home I mentioned I dinged the car (it was dark and I honestly thought it wasn't bad). Well the next morning he saw the damage. I missed the light somehow but there is a permanent gap between the trunk and the fender - Cost about $800-1200. Unfortunately he kept the money and didn't fix my car which I still have (16 years now) so I'm always being reminded of it. He did the same thing in a parking garage but that car is long gone hurrumph!
All of my family and friends all learned to drive up north at our cottage. It had in those days a big sandy beach you could drive on and that is how most of us learned to drive. This one day as I was parking the car in back of our cottage, we all parked are cars at what we called "the hitching post", I pulled and instead of putting my foot on the brake I put in on the gas and drove the car up over the hitching post. They then had to cut a part of the hitching post in order to get the car down.
I was terrifed of what my father would say. He had not come up to the cottage with us that weekend and when we got home, I was terrifed to go into the house. Now I was only 16 at the time, so you can imagine how scared I was. But when my mom explained what happened all my dad said was, "is she okay". So I have tried since then to be a careful driver, but accidents do happen from time to time.
But these drivers were the worse I have ever seen, even on a good day.
Catslady _ am so with you. I was parked in a multiple story ramp at work one day. you know those huge cement posts that they usually paint bright colors so you don't miss them? Well, i didn't miss one of them. :o) Drove right smack into that sucker. The guy that fixed my car couldn't believe my air bag didn't deploy :o) i blamed in on a long day at work and a blinding headache. that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Kathleen - I feel your pain - even though I'm laughing. I can just see them cutting down that post to get your car unhooked :o)
Hi Cindy –
I’m currently reading Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps by Allan and Barbara Pease. They assert that testosterone increases spatial ability. So the more estrogen a woman has, the more challenging she finds activities like reverse or parallel parking. Personally, I think parallel parking is the kind of challenge men thrive on and women don’t because it takes too long and it’s inefficient!
Kelsey
I think I have to get that book :o)
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