MOSCOW: At a disused airfield on the outskirts of Moscow, Yekaterina Karenina hits the accelerator of her BMW and speeds past a row of broken, faded military jets.
A quick jolt of the steering wheel with her well-manicured fingers flicks the car deftly through a 360-degree spin before accelerating off again.
For $500, Russia’s women drivers can pay Karenina to teach them the same trick in a country where females behind the wheel are still a relative novelty.
“Fifteen to 25 years ago, there were no female drivers in Russia,” said Natalya Lipatova, the editor of Women at the Wheel, a new monthly magazine for female drivers.
“There was only one car in the family and that belonged to the husband, the brother or the father and they did all the driving. Now many more women can afford their own car.”
There are about 142 million people living in Russia and roughly two million female drivers this year, almost 50 per cent more than in 2001, according to marketing group TNS-Gallup.
Women cashing in on Russia’s oil-fuelled economic resurgence and buying their own cars face an array of hazards on the road network, often little improved since Soviet times.
Rusting Russian-made Ladas, sleek black Mercedes and dilapidated goods trucks swerve, speed and thunder along the Russian capital’s heavily congested highways in a blare of horns.
Crashes are common and at any moment a traffic policeman may flag a vehicle down, ostensibly to check documents — a common ruse to extract a petty bribe.
“The main thing is safety,” said instructor Karenina, who is employed by BMW in Moscow to teach only women.
“When you sit inside the car you should lock the doors and, of course, tinted windows are better as other people can’t see who is driving.”
Lipatova’s new magazine also aims to help fill the knowledge gap for novice women drivers.
“When a woman sits behind the wheel of a car, she enters another world,” Lipatova, a 36-year-old sporting a red leather jacket, told Reuters.—Reuters
