Robin Cummins is about to become very unpopular with women all over Britain. In his first interview on the subject, the chief driving examiner has delivered a decisive blow in the battle of the sexes: men, he says, are better drivers than women.

It is the first time that any senior government official — let alone the man who oversees the testing of 1.5m learner drivers a year — has voiced what men habitually take as a given. And to make matters worse he has the figures to prove it.

Men show more natural ability at driving, are better at control and manoeuvres and need less tuition before they pass their test, says Cummins. “With young men there seems to be more natural ability. Some females — though not all — take a lot more teaching to be able to use the controls. It might be in the genes or a matter of observing mum and dad driving, or it might go back to playing with cars rather than dolls. I only know what we see.”

He claims the Driving Standards Agency’s pass rates show that, overall, women need more time and more attempts to pass their driving test. While women take an average of 52 hours' tuition before passing, men need just 36 and the overall pass rate for women is six points behind men's at just 40%.

The statistics also throw up some interesting differences between driving styles that will have men nodding sagely and women snorting with derision. Women are 40% more likely than men to fail their test when reversing or attempting a three-point turn. For the amusement of unreconstructed chauvinists, one of the things that women rarely fail on — that is to say, they are much better at — is looking in their mirrors.

“I’m not saying anything that isn’t in the figures,” says Cummins. “Of course there are plenty of women who are excellent drivers and plenty of men who are terrible, but overall it does seem to be that men can pick up the basic skills more quickly.”

His comments will spark a thousand arguments (though not between Cummins and his wife. “I think she’s happy to go along with the thought process,” he says. “It’s not something we argue about”). Last month Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, voiced the opinion that differences between the brains of men and women might account for the lack of top female scientists. His comments made headlines around the world and he was accused of everything from stereotyping to simple ignorance.

Cummins is not a Harvard professor but he has been coaching drivers for 30 years. As chief driving instructor for the Nottingham-based Driving Standards Agency — the government funded body that manages tests at 437 centres round the country — he is responsible for maintaining the standards of driving examinations and for supervising all 1,586 examiners in England, Wales and Scotland. If anyone is qualified to comment on the proficiency of learner drivers, he is.

He can take comfort in new research about the long-disputed differences between male and female drivers. A team of German researchers from Giessen University recently tested 40 volunteers of both sexes and found women had lower levels of spatial skills — the ability to assess and orientate shapes and spaces — than men.

The researchers linked this to exposure to testosterone in the womb. This is circulating in a mother’s blood but male babies get an extra dose because they produce the hormone themselves in greater quantities than female babies. Women who had been exposed to higher than average levels of maternal testosterone in the womb performed better than other women.

“We found that the women who had a low digit ratio, meaning a longer ring than index finger — which is an indication of higher testosterone exposure in utero — were better at spatial tests,” said Petra Kempel, who led the team and has just published her findings in the psychology journal Intelligence. “Higher prenatal levels of testosterone correlated with better spatial skills. It is a cliché to say women are worse at map reading and parking. But the research did indicate that men are generally better at rotating 3D objects than women.”

Another new study, from America, shows that women, despite their oft-quoted ability to multitask, are less able to compensate for the distraction of talking into a mobile phone when driving than men. Older women, in particular, had markedly slower braking responses than their male counterparts.

Researchers for the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety in Massachusetts conclude: “These results suggest . . . it may be particularly important to target educational campaigns on driver distraction towards female drivers.”