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The only traffic offence Cassy Gardiner is perhaps guilty of is
applying lipstick when she drives.
But the traffic rulebook doesn’t have a specific clause on personal grooming yet.
Whereas her husband, Rusty, is conscious-stricken because he occasionally drives around a speed bump near their home to avoid it.
Even then, he’ll never chance this with Cassy and juniors, Gemma, 9, and Mia, 7, in the car. Again, FM is not sure whether there is a fine for sneaky manoeuvres to avoid speed bumps.
Cassy and Rusty, both Australians, are near-perfect drivers. If this were a driving test, they would have passed with soaring scores.
But it isn’t. I’m on this drive, armed with a set of questions that will help us better understand the dynamics at work when two genders get behind the wheel.
“That’s her rule!” says Rusty. “Not to swerve to the side to avoid the speed bump when they [Cassy and the kids] are in the car with me.” Cassy ensconces herself in the driver’s seat of the Dodge Durango SLT, secures the seatbelt, adjusts the rear view mirror, glances at the wing mirrors, and drives out to meet city traffic.
“Traffic rules are there for a reason. I even read out the speed signs when Rusty is driving,” she says, as she calmly negotiates the Bur Dubai evening traffic.
“I don’t like getting stuck in traffic, but I don’t mind it [driving]. I drive a lot; ferrying kids to school and back,” Cassy says with a hint of pride in her voice.
“You probably do more kilometres in the car than I do,” says Rusty, who doesn’t enjoy city driving.
When together, Rusty drives 90 per cent of the time. On a recent camping trip near Masafi, he drove all the way.
“Patriarchal reasoning, perhaps?” I ask.
“Tradition, I guess,” Cassy quips, admitting, “on longer drives, we take turns.”
The Gardiner family enjoys long-distance country driving. “I particularly love long, winding roads,” says Rusty, referring to the agrestic simplicity of roads in Spain where they lived for a year, and in Canada.
To battle the languor of any long drive, they adjust the air-con and the stereo. “We turn down the air-con because when it is warm one is more likely to fall asleep. And we turn the volume up [of the stereo] to keep ourselves awake,” says Rusty.
Speaking of music, the stereo belts out a mix of the old and the modern.
“I like music I can sing along to,” says Cassy, an ardent fan of Robbie Williams.
“She likes wordy music. I like rock ’n’ roll,” Rusty says.
“But there is a lot we agree on too!” Cassy says, laughing.
“Oh yes! However, we can’t let you in on some of the stuff we’ve been listening to. We have kids, so that influences our music selection. And I like Robbie Williams, though we are all sick of listening to him,” says Rusty.
The Gardiners, married for 15 years, say they don’t fight, but “disagree” about certain driving aspects, mainly the routes.
Rusty likes to come home a different way on the return journey, especially long ones. “When I drive to Oman, I don’t want to come home the way we went,” he says.
Luckily for Rusty, Cassy doesn’t mind, but prefers to stick to the routes she knows.
Rusty, however, likes the thrill of tarmac adventure. Recently, when driving to Dragon Mart, what do you think he did when he missed the turn-off?
“Rather than turn around and get back on the main road, I discovered a new route,” he says.
“I would have turned back,” notes Cassy.
In the passenger seat, she takes on the role of the navigator, telling Rusty which way to go. “That’s what I find annoying. And when it slows us down, I get angry,” says Rusty.
“Occasionally, she has authentic warnings. I, on the other hand, rarely tell her what to do because it doesn’t get me anywhere except into an argument!”
By now, we’re at the main Satwa roundabout. Cars jostle for the fewest metres of road space, and Cassy is still unflustered about the threatening evening rush hour.
Rusty, though not at the wheel, has a lot to complain about. “What frustrates me in a traffic jam is when drivers do ridiculous things such as jump queues and honk incessantly,” he says.
Cassy has a few of stuck-in-traffic stories too. Not so long ago, she took this rude honking business seriously at an intersection where she didn’t think it was safe to proceed. “I stepped out of the car to ask the driver behind why he was honking. I didn’t get an answer,” she says.
Now it’s Rusty’s turn at the wheel. He clambers in, readjusts the rearview mirror and swerves on to the main road cautiously. We now head out towards the Port Rashid road, now asphyxiatingly choked.
“Sometimes, I get scared when Rusty drives. But I have a coping mechanism - I close my eyes!” laughs Cassy.
Rusty grew up on a farm in Australia, where riding bikes, driving a tractor and a car was normal for any 10-year-old boy. “So it wasn’t a big deal when I got my licence!” he says.
But for Cassy, it was. “Getting a licence was equated with coming of age. I applied for my first driving lesson one week after my 18th birthday.”
On the topic of rash driving, the couple could expound at length. “There is a percentage [of drivers] who don’t follow traffic rules,” says Rusty. “If a rash driver has an accident, it is a shame. The sad part is he ends up hurting innocent people.”
“There was a campaign in Australia that stated, ‘It’s better to be late than dead on time.’ Speeding cuts reaction time; it is not worth the risk. Rusty weaves and changes lanes more than I do … he also drives faster than I do. But he always assesses the traffic conditions and stays within the speed limit,” says Cassy.
Using the indicator is an important safety measure and Rusty says he indicates 95 per cent of the time. “If I forget, usually Cassy is the first to point it out.”
“I indicate 99 per cent of the time,” says Cassy.
When Rusty took driving lessons in Australia, he was taught to allow the indicator to blink eight times before turning.
“You’d fail a driving test if you allowed it to go only six times,” he says.
The roads are getting busier, but Rusty doesn’t show any signs of impatience. Observably, traffic doesn’t affect him at the wheel, but it sure does before he makes his social plans.
“Before I decide to do anything in Dubai, I think about the traffic involved to do it,” he says.
We’ve now returned to where we started. The drive didn’t last as long, but the questions answered so far gave impetus to other pressing ones. Like how men are perceived as better drivers than women.
To this, Rusty says, “Men are more mechanically minded than women, but this doesn’t make them better drivers.”
“Men are more confident on the roads, but this doesn’t make them better drivers,” retorts Cassy.
Rusty is quick to defend his gender. “But we understand the geometry of what a car will do under given circumstances more than women. For instance, if a car had lost traction or you found yourself in a four-wheel drift, most men will know what to do,” says Rusty.
“I know that one too!” Cassy boasts.
It’s no surprise that Rusty takes care of car maintenance. “He is more aware of the periodicity and what part needs to be changed. I have booked it for a service only once,” Cassy confesses.
“She wouldn’t care if it had alloy wheels or not. But I would. She gives me a hard time because I got a second exhaust fitted. I think it sounds fantastic,” says Rusty.
But when Rusty was buying their car, Cassy did have some input. “I asked him to choose red for the exterior,” she says.
The only time Cassy got down to any mechanical business was on a skiing trip. “I had to get the tyre off to put snow chains and then replace it,” she says.
But if she ever ended up with a flat tyre?
“I would be more likely to call AAA.”
FM Magazine went on a drive with Rusty and Cassy Gardiner.
Rusty is a Dubai-based pilot and Cassy is a homemaker. They have been living in Dubai since 2004 and drive a Dodge Durango SLT.
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