IN its wisdom, Scarborough Borough Council has designated Easter Saturday "chalet day" - the day those of us with seasonal lets have to take possession of our little wooden boltholes on Whitby foreshore.

So, on Saturday morning, we'll fill the car with a literal shed-load to kit out this mini-kitchen-cum-living-room for the summer and join the cars, buses, caravan-towers and bikers on the slow bank holiday grind over the moor road.

I doubt many of the family outings we see will have Mum at the wheel, but mums are better drivers than dads, say children quizzed for a nationwide survey. Almost half said Mum was safer behind the wheel, against a third who plumped for Dad.

A third also say, in the survey conducted for Vauxhall, that Dad drives too fast. He's five times more likely than Mum to drive while talking on his mobile, too.

Mum isn't perfect. She's more likely to get lost. Maybe the children haven't yet worked out that mums are more likely to admit they're lost and stop to ask for directions; macho man will drive round for 15 minutes on a scenic detour until pure luck offers the right turning. She's not so nifty at parking, either. Parking is a skill, skills take practice, who hogs the family car? Just a thought.

But it's when the survey gets on to parent/child views of car journeys that the gap really widens. Just 4pc of North-East adults admit to hitting another car when the children have been on board, yet a quarter of the children reckon to have seen it happen.

On road rage and rows, 38pc of the region's parents admit to the odd four-letter word, but a whopping 97pc of children say the air can turn blue.

Half of the North-East parents appreciated car journeys as family time; only 3pc of the children did.

Singing in the car, music, how the children amuse themselves in the back seat, boredom and car sickness all feature in the survey, not unconnected with Vauxhall's launch of a new family car early in June which "adapts as the family gets older".

Not being part of the motoring press, I missed the two-day Disneyland jolly to try out the Mireva, so all I knew was that it had a separate audio system for the rear seats - "it means the kids don't have to listen to Tom Jones any more".

I'd need more than that to tempt me, if I was still family chauffeur. I never wanted to listen to Tom Jones in the front seat anyway.

One priority, then as now, is slide-on luggage loading (no heaving bikes, sports gear, shopping bags, crates of student clobber over a high lip) with plenty of space. What about that, I asked. There is a "significant" amount of space - bikes were mentioned, which is promising - and, yes, it's slide-on.

What every woman wants, and I've seen only under a lift-up flap between driver and passenger seats in a friend's 4X4, is somewhere safe to put a handbag. How did the Mireva measure up? "Decent-sized glove compartment". Hmm, I carry a hefty organiser bag. But there are spaces behind the front seats and covered wells between the rear seats and the boot. So we play pass-the-handbag every time we get in or out of the car, I fear. I should have said safe and accessible!

"Adaptable" means the seats are flexible, and mobile, enough to cope with growing children. Families who keep their cars as long as we do will appreciate that and it strikes me that grandparents might too, as they ferry an assortment of ages around.

Forget all that. A survey of owners' children this time next year will put the separate audio system right on top. Sorry, I don't know the launch price of peace and quiet in the front.