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Friday, October 29, 2010
One change I hope I’ll never be making
I should come clean. I don’t live in Gloucestershire and I’ve never even attempted to change a tyre. Perhaps this is why I am not shocked, surprised, alarmed or even remotely ashamed at news that well over half of all women in the county can’t change a car tyre.
Well, so what? Of course, it is helpful to be able to change a car tyre, but, most of us don’t want to. And why would we? It’s why many of us include breakdown assistance in our women’s car insurance policies.
In an ideal world I would know how to change a car tyre, but so too would my boyfriend, so would my brother, my mum, my best friend and my colleagues.
We live in an age where we are deprived of time. We spend countless hours working and belong to a generation where we have become divorced from the processes that we rely on to function.
As a result, we don’t know how to change a car tyre and we don’t know how to repair and re-cut our clothes. Perhaps this is a bad thing, but, realistically, how much time do we have in our lives?
After we’ve been to work, cooked our meals and done things such as make a car insurance comparison, do we really want to be learning how to change a car tyre?
This is why I feel less than kindly towards those who respond to such surveys by using it as an opportunity to criticise women for a lack of technical know-how. We’re busy, modern women and sometimes it’s okay if being emancipated means we’re free to pay for outside help.
Image © Afroswede via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Well, so what? Of course, it is helpful to be able to change a car tyre, but, most of us don’t want to. And why would we? It’s why many of us include breakdown assistance in our women’s car insurance policies. In an ideal world I would know how to change a car tyre, but so too would my boyfriend, so would my brother, my mum, my best friend and my colleagues.
We live in an age where we are deprived of time. We spend countless hours working and belong to a generation where we have become divorced from the processes that we rely on to function.
As a result, we don’t know how to change a car tyre and we don’t know how to repair and re-cut our clothes. Perhaps this is a bad thing, but, realistically, how much time do we have in our lives?
After we’ve been to work, cooked our meals and done things such as make a car insurance comparison, do we really want to be learning how to change a car tyre?
This is why I feel less than kindly towards those who respond to such surveys by using it as an opportunity to criticise women for a lack of technical know-how. We’re busy, modern women and sometimes it’s okay if being emancipated means we’re free to pay for outside help.
Image © Afroswede via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Monday, October 25, 2010
Ladies are thrifty when it comes to buying a vehicle
Take a look at some of the greatest car chase movies of all time and you’ll see men driving fast expensive cars.
Steve McQueen burns some serious rubber in a Ford Mustang, Daniel Craig puts the pedal to the metal in an elegant Aston Martin DBS and Jason Statham zooms along in a BMW735i.
It may not shock women's car insurance holders to discover that men like to emulate their film heroes by driving around in luxurious cars, or that the average man is prepared to splash out up to £14,000 on a powerful new vehicle. While women impose a spending limit of £9,000, according to research by Findyoucars.com.
Women are supposedly interested in how many children can fit on the rear seats and how much luggage can be stored in the boot. Men are apparently enticed by quick 0-60mph times and modified exhausts.
The vehicle search site claims that the majority of women drivers will be happy as long as the car comes in a pretty colour and has comfortable seats. Yeah, right!
Most men who visited the car comparison website during September were on the hunt for flashy “bimmers”. A high number of women's car insurance holders searched for basic Volkswagens.
Labels: women's car insurance
Friday, October 22, 2010
iPhone app informs drivers of their environmental impact
Environmentally friendly women drivers will be happy to hear that Volvo have launched a green iPhone App. The promotional literature says that this brand new programme will “dispel the myth that small cars are automatically low emissions cars”.
Owners of the elegant iPhone will find it simple to install this free toxic emissions measurer. They can then discover how much carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, hydrocarbon and particulates their gas guzzler is spitting out.
It's no great wonder that Volvo are keen to show off their green credentials, especially as the V70 2.5 litre, petrol manual estate produces less than 50% of the amount of toxic emissions as the seemingly innocuous Fiat 500 Supermini.
The 500 produces a whopping 2,080 mg/km of emissions, while many other cars emit more than 1,000 mg/km. Women's car insurance buyers may be shocked to learn that the Nissan Pathfinder and Seat Ibiza come high up on the list of shame.
Sales of the Skoda Yeti 1.2 105ps and the Nissan Qashqai+2, 2 litre 4×2 may receive a boost after eco-conscious car buyers discover that these vehicles are ultra green. The findings are also unlikely to do any harm to the clean reputation of the Volvo brand.
Peter Rask, regional president for Volvo car UK, Ireland and Iceland, said, “We proved earlier in the year that just because a driver is buying a small car doesn’t necessarily mean they are buying a low tailpipe emission car.
“What our Emissions Equality programme aims to do is to help drivers make more informed decisions by giving them access to the total emissions data of their car. Ultimately by using the information on our App, drivers can genuinely help improve local air quality.”
Volvo is obviously a company which embraces the latest technology. Not satisfied with designing the sophisticated new app they have developed a Facebook petition to pressurise the government into making the emissions data available in vehicle showrooms.
Good on them!
Labels: women's car insurance
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Women shape the future for BMW
Hoorah! BMW will be marked in women’s history books forever onward. Let’s face it, cars are a stereotypically male obsession and car designing is stereotypically a man’s job, but lo, two women, Nadya Arnaout and Juliane Blasi, have come to change all that. Together they have designed the interior and exterior of the new 2010 BMW Z4, and boy does it look good!
Quite understandably, when it was announced by BMW at the Detroit Auto Show, that this powerful sports car, which has amusingly been described as having a "masculine swagger", had been designed by two women, the reporters where left speechless – and that’s no mean feat.
Nadya Arnaout, 32,and Juliane Blasi, 37, were shocked to win an internal competition launched by BMW's worldwide design for the impressive job of styling the second-generation Z4 roadster. BMW teams from Germany and the USA handed in their drawings and clay models incognito, so the women weren’t picked for any ulterior motive. They won fair and square.
Quite understandably, when it was announced by BMW at the Detroit Auto Show, that this powerful sports car, which has amusingly been described as having a "masculine swagger", had been designed by two women, the reporters where left speechless – and that’s no mean feat. Nadya Arnaout, 32,and Juliane Blasi, 37, were shocked to win an internal competition launched by BMW's worldwide design for the impressive job of styling the second-generation Z4 roadster. BMW teams from Germany and the USA handed in their drawings and clay models incognito, so the women weren’t picked for any ulterior motive. They won fair and square.
Image © uggboy via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Monday, October 4, 2010
What Katie said about woman drivers
Oh, dear, Katie Price, aka Jordan, you’re not doing much for the sisterhood, are you?Fine, have a pink horsebox, if that’s what you want. It may be overly-girlie, reductive and a bit, well, crass, but I admit that I can see the appeal and even you admitted that it was “a bit over the top”. In fact, I’m disposed to the odd “pink moment” myself – there’s nothing wrong with it.
But please Katie, don’t veer from your driving lane into another then claim that it just happened because you’re a “typical woman driver”.
We busted this myth many years ago. There is now even a very strong case for us being better drivers than men – it‘s why we’re able to get very cheap car insurance and men are not.
On being prosecuted for errant driving, Katie told a court, “I'm a typical woman driver. I'm just not used to a lorry that big. I was probably a bit scared because it was on a motorway.”
Please, Katie. Nooooooooooo!!!!
Comments like this are so unhelpful and only reinforce patronizing male attitudes towards good woman drivers. It’s the kind of comment that makes men want to teach us how to parallel park when we’re perfectly capable of doing it ourselves.
Image © Ana_Fuji, via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence
Friday, October 1, 2010
Gender bender car insurance
In news that is likely to come as a crushing blow to companies that provide car insurance for women, it seems that there is no such thing as the male driver.
Yes, you heard right, it appears that all the men mysteriously vanish the moment they get behind that wheel, that's if the latest piece of research from vehicle manufacturer Seat is anything to go by.
After surveying 3,000 UK drivers the car maker found that a surprising number of men like nothing more than to sing along to typically female-favoured artists when behind the wheel, with three favourites being Wham!, Shirley Bassey and Take That.
However, it is not only men whose listening habits change when driving. It seems that being behind the wheel has gender-bending effects on women too. And although most women motorists might not go quite as far as singing along to Tom Waits, many like to have a good sing to Meat Loaf.
"The car is a precious musical sanctuary where blokes can shamelessly practice their best falsetto to Scissor Sisters' Take Your Mamma and women can growl along to Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell, all at maximum volume," commented a former editor of both NME and Top Gear magazines.
Anyway, it's Friday and time for me to drive home to a bit of Barry White – hurray!