Morgan Rinckey: The stereotype of women drivers

Cruuunch!

My car released a noise that could have come out of the Kraken. I backed my car down the hill in my front yard and accidently hit the accelerator instead of the breaks, running my car into my dad’s truck.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I mumble to myself in hopes that nothing bad happened to any of the vehicles - or, if it was bad, that God would strike me down before my dad saw.

I get out of the car to look at the damage. Somehow I hit the truck’s bumper with the tail end of my car and the indented place where the license plate goes took the brunt of the force. There were red flakes of paint from my car on the trunk’s bumper, so I wiped them up and kicked the gravel around so there would be no visible evidence.

I actually fist pumped and thanked Claudia the Chrysler Sebring (my car) for being so awesome.

This is probably the best example to why I’m a bad driver. I had a hit and run with a parked car. I guess I could have called my dad and explained what happened, but I was scared I would get in trouble. There wasn’t any damage and it would have been weird if I left a Post-it note under the windshield.

I’m a bad driver. I’m a woman. But I’m not a bad driver because I’m a woman. Yes, I got into an accident with a parked truck, but I hate when people just assume that I or any other woman is a bad driver because they are a woman. That was just one day in all of the days that I have driven.

Many of you are probably thinking, “Wow, that girl’s a ditz.” Others, maybe, “Oh, I remember when I did the exact same thing!” Still more are thinking, “Did I forget to eat lunch again?”

But little do they know that there are some who are actually thinking, “Wow, women are terrible drivers and this girl proves it.”

Yeah, it’s a joke that get’s made a lot - women are bad drivers, haha, go make me a sandwich. The jokes are told with a big laugh, and everyone pretends to not be serious. But there are people behind those too-wide grins that mean it, that sincerely think forcing a negative stereotype onto a group is okay.

If I based everything I think about one gender on one person, I would believe all guys pick their noses and wipe it on bus seats and that all girls enjoy playing Pokémon; I saw people do this in first grade but that doesn’t mean every person of that gender does it.

One girl getting into an accident shouldn’t be enough to prove the gender stereotype that all women are bad drivers. But to some people it is. And they stink.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list distracted driving, impaired driving and teen drivers as major causes for car accidents that end in death. Note they do not specifically list “women” as a major cause of accidents.

I can laugh at how silly of a driver I am - sometimes I hit all the potholes while screaming to a Katy Perry song. But being girly and being a bad driver are mutually exclusive. The next time someone makes a joke about women drivers, or any other type of unfair discriminatory statement, think about how unfair that is to that group of people, and pause before you laugh.

Morgan Rinckey is a first-year double majoring in English and communication, and is the Opinion editor of the Independent Collegian.