A driving school for women only
Get in the car - the car is ready to drive on the street. Now it's my turn to be behind the wheel for a trial. As an absolute novice driver, although I am in possession of a driver's license for 26 years. But fortunately, it does not say that I've been an auto-abstainer for ten years and can not drive at all. Neither after the driver's license examination nor after the second training 15 years ago, neither privately nor professionally - neither in the foreign nor in the own car - I have never sat in the past, let alone routiniert behind the wheel. At the age of 17, I thought I was jerking my way through the area, I finally hold the rag in my hands. At 44, I have long since mutated into a vehement advocate of slowness. Instead of the joy of driving, I feel a sheer horror, a simple change of lane is already a horror. The fact that I only use public transport is ecologically sensible, but from time to time I naturally wish to be motorized. If only the car was not my enemy ...
First the theory ...
The two from the women's driving school: Sabine Schaffer (r) and Kerstin Meyer.
Sabine Schaffer nods. She knows stories like these enough. "There are so many women without driving experience - and often is the reason that they have never really learned it," says the head of the Hamburg women's driving school. Together with her colleague Kerstin Meyer, she ensures that prevented road users get back into gear, that passport owners become active car drivers again. And even more: "Of course, we want to cover the entire range - beginners, women who may have already broken off a driver training program and women without driving experience who want to practice re-entry," says Sabine Schaffer. "Most of all middle-aged women come to us consciously, many of whom have already given up driving licenses, and for them we are the last bit to try it again with the driver's license."
... then the practice
Red hair, a colorful striped jersey and a mischievous smile - Sabine Schaffer looks as if she knows all the fears and nightmares that can haunt a cranked-up middle-aged female driver. And acts as if she knew as surely as how to overcome such visions - with calm, patience and humor. With this woman in the passenger seat and Kerstin Meyer today exceptionally in the back seat can really happen now, my mind says, while my stomach rebelled loudly. I nervously turn the ignition key ...
Stop! "Before you start," slows down Sabine Schaffer, "of course you first have to familiarize yourself with the car." Oh yes. So I practice what was once a regular ritual in the distant past in 45 futile driving lessons - adjust seat height and position, check exterior and rear view mirror. I operate switches, pull levers, push buttons, move and adjust and try to cope blindly with the six gears - driving with automatic has not prevailed. Clutch, brake, gas: I pedal alternately on the pedals, test the handbrake, put the turn signals. It feels as if I meet old acquaintances - one knows each other, but first has to get used to each other carefully again. But I had forgotten how much preparation the driving requires - I've been busy with the car for almost fifteen minutes and yet have not moved a millimeter from the spot. First take a deep breath.
Theory: About good and bad education
For seven years there is the Hamburg women's driving school - one of three nationwide. "Back then, we came from a women's project that originally had the goal of training driving instructors," says Kerstin Meyer. "Even though the gender ratio in this industry has become somewhat similar, the profession is still dominated by men, most women still learn from male colleagues today - even if one considers that about 50 percent of the colleagues their teaching training In the Bundeswehr, it is not surprising that many had problems with their driver training or have ". What she says then sounds familiar to me: "Many driving instructors have their own fixed style, they sit in the car, do their program and whoever does not get it, has just been unlucky." Immediately a picture emerges in my head: I see a woman clinging to the steering wheel - as if the car steered her and not the other way around - and meekly completing the same depressing hours, while the driving instructor bored demonstratively bored over radio with other colleagues bad jokes. That was 1979. The woman was me.
"Patience and educational skills are very important to us, as well as technical know-how", intervenes Kerstin Meyer my thoughts."We try to find the most successful methods to teach someone something and think about how to approach the student in a targeted and individual way." In the past, methodology and pedagogy did not matter at all in driving instructor training, because it was mainly technique. " "But our customers pay a lot of money, so we have to bring performance," says the boss and counts on what makes the driving training in their school: "Our students learn, for example, maintenance services such as measuring air pressure or oil change, also refueling can be done if necessary To ride on the motorway alone and to accelerate properly on relatively short strips - our students practice this all the time, just like changing lanes, or turning left ". The two are sure: "The women who have made us their driving license, they can drive in the city and elsewhere."
... and practice: It starts
Luckily we are not driving on the highway today, but "we're leaving the parking situation now", Sabine Schaffer instructs me. So turn off warning lights, clutch kick ..., start car (or was that the other way round?) ..., engage gear ..., clutch slowly come ..., and accelerate ... and switch .... I follow the instructions with confidence. We drive.
Theory: A bit of envy
How the times have changed: In the beginning, the two women's driving school teachers were not only regarded by the driving examiners as funny, "also our students were specifically examined sharper," says Sabine Schaffer. "But in the meantime, we are no longer regarded as a peer-to-peer and smiled at by our peers, and those who still make stupid comments know themselves that it's nonsense."
... and practice: in the big city jungle
I would just like to drive straight ahead, but I have to turn around courageously parked cars, pay attention to cyclists or right of way. I keep up to the first traffic light. But now I am to turn on the four-lane main road, to classify me in this nasty, flowing metropolitan traffic. You love time, there is time to adapt to the pace - accelerate, brake, switch, (uups, not in the fourth), when turning on pedestrians and cyclists pay attention .... Hopefully everyone will see the driving school sign on the car. And the main thing, the others pay attention. "Drive ahead, watch everything early enough - that's what it's all about," says Sabine Schaffer encouragingly. "If you control the car, the shift will be automatic at some point." Too bad that I have never come this far, I think. I'm not stupid. And here I do not have to feel that way either. Here I can make mistakes, annoy me or amuse myself and continue practicing. With support, I finally get even a passable parking maneuver out. And then it's done: engine off, handbrake pull. Get out. I was not so excited for a long time. We laugh. To be honest: driving once around the block is totally exciting as a re-entry.
addresses
Hamburger women driving school Gorch-Fock-Strasse 1, 20357 Hamburg, Tel .: 040/39 90 61 22; Fax: 040/39 90 62 25, www.die-hamburger-frauenfahrschule.de.
Driving school for women in Cologne Mauritiussteinweg 45, 50676 Cologne Phone / Fax 0221/2407777, www.fahrschule-fuer-frauen.de/
Mainzer woman driving school Hinkelsteiner-Straße 7, 55128 Mainz-Bretzenheim. And Woman Ferienfahrschule car-mobile women, Schulrat-Spang-Str. 24, 55597 Wöllstein, Tel./Fax: 06703/4839, www.frauenferienfahrschule.de/
