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RSS FeedWho are the better drivers: Men or women?
Results so far:
| Men | 53% | 146 votes | Total: 277 votes | |
| Women | 47% | 131 votes |
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Add to FavoritesI tend to think that everyone on the road is a horrible driver. . . except for me, that is. In reality though, there are a lot of good drivers out there, and they are comprised of both sexes. In general, men tend to be the better drivers for a verity of reasons.
There are few statistics out there that take into account miles driven, accidents, and gender all in the same report. Most often, statistics might tell you which gender had more accidents, but without the context of how much each sex is driving, you really can not use that as an accurate way to tell which sex has less accidents. For example, ten women drive ten miles a day and two of them have an accident. Next, 100 men drive 100 miles and four of them have an accident. This would usually get reported as, "Of the six total accidents, men have 66% of them," which would lead you to falsely believe that men are worse drivers. But, when you look at how many people were driving and how much they were driving, you can actually see that women had a higher chance of having an accident, in this example.
Here is one bit of statistics from the John Hopkins report that actually takes these things into account:
"Overall, men were involved in 5.1 crashes per million miles driven compared to 5.7 crashes for women, despite the fact that on average they drove 74 percent more miles per year than did women." (Epidemiology, June 1998)
This shows us that men drive nearly three times more miles than women, and yet they had about one crash less per every two million miles. Based on that statistic, men are drastically better drivers than women are.
Young men do tend to be much more aggressive drivers than women and older men, but aggressive does not necessarily mean careless. An aggressive driver may be rude, go fast, and get angry, but they may still check all of their mirrors, use signals, make full stops, and generally pay attention to everything around them.
Women, on the other hand, tend to be more careless when they drive. Their attention drifts toward whatever is on their mind or whoever they are talking to. Women also tend to go fast, but they are less likely to pay attention to everything going on around them while driving. They might miss the car that is next to them as they try to change lanes, they don't see the stop sign as they go through the intersection, or they do not notice the car in front of them has its brake lights on. Lack of attention leads to many more accidents than aggression does.
Granted these are generalizations, and not everyone fits into these categories, but, of all drivers, men tend to be better drivers than women. In my opinion, though, there really are very few good drivers out there, men or women, because it seems to me that most everyone on the road needs to improve drastically.
Learn more about this author, David Bowie.
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Women
Men may drive the car better, but women cooperate with traffic better. My wife doesn't know the difference between the radiator and the lug wrench. Doesn't that make me a better driver? No. So let's have some fun with this.
Aren't men better drivers because driving a car is a dominant act and men are dominant? Of course not. It's better if men drive only on straight roads lined with water-filled crash barrels and absolutely no traffic. Then men can really show their stuff. "Hold my beer and watch this," men shout in prelude to demonstrating their driving superiority. Hey, how many women do you know who do that, huh?
Cars understand men better than women. Cars feel more comfortable with a testosterone-overloa ded driver at the wheel. Cars are dangerous and men are dangerous and the twain shall ever be. It takes a real man to drive a car. To push it to its limits, to redline the tachometer in rush-hour traffic to get home after work. To chirp those wide-profile Pirellis during a lane change and slip ever so gracefully into that eye-of-the-needle opening that seems like the door to freedom and gains an important two seconds in a twenty-minute drive home. To explode from that traffic light with hands straight-armed in the ten-two position on the wheel and the pedal to the metal. God, what a rush. It's even better if he's wearing Armani sunglasses at midnight and black driving gloves with little holes over the knuckles to release the fire.
Come on . . . who drives the car on a date? Men. Who drives the car to Burger King with Mom in the passenger seat and the kids fighting in the back? Who drives to church on Sunday? Men do the driving because women don't like to. They don't feel comfortable behind the wheel of a two-ton destroyer with four-piston rear disk brakes and performance-enhancin g drugs. Women don't care about the important stuff like power-to-weight ratios and changing out the computer chip that suppresses maximum top speed. Women don't want to think about optimal tire pressures and G-forces in the turns. What do they care about torque-converters and four-wheel traction?
You only have to look at insurance company rates for men and women. Men clearly win that argument hands down. I mean, after all, it's a free-market, supply-and-demand situation. Men are charged more because they're willing to pay more for the privilege. Women don't like to drive as much so insurance companies lower rates for them to get them on board. Simple economics, eh?
Traffic tickets? Whoa. If it weren't for men, half of the municipalities in the country would go broke. Men contribute far more than women to local welfare, road repair, and ambulances. You gotta hand it to men for that, right? Men keep the economy working. If only women drove cars, where would the money come from to pay those escalating official salaries?
And there's more. Men are the ones who want the 5.0-liter LX Mustang or the latest edition of the Corvette Z06 with a 7-liter, 505 horsepower engine in a magnesium engine cradle. How many women care about that, huh? Not many. Okay, so maybe that's extreme. So let's look at the compromise, a nice comfortable Cadillac Escalade. But does Martha care about the 6.2-liter Vortex engine and road-sensing suspension?
Nah, she cares that she doesn't have to shift gears and about the Bose Cabin-Surround sound system so she can enjoy XM-Radio and whether the Tri-Tone Climate Control air-conditioning is directed to the backseats when she and her friends go shopping. She cares more about getting safely to work after dropping the kids at school than cornering stability in that hairpin turn on the way to the supermarket.
And next but not last, who are the ones who still drive a stick? Men. A manual transmission with six gears for a smidgen of extra control and more power at any speed is the sole purview of men. To drive with both hands and both feet takes talent that women don't even want. Slamming the clutch to the floor and careful coordination with the gas pedal to smoke the tires out of the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot is a skill lost on women.
Sure, there are anomalies. Danika Patrick knows how to drive a car. She's cool. We have a friend, a forty-year-old woman, who single-handedly rebuilt (and enhanced) the hemi-head engine of her restored her 1968 Charger and she has lots of tickets; way cool. My wife actually got a speeding ticket one time in the thirty-five years I've known her. I applaud them all for their contribution to the general welfare and their zeal to drive like real men.
The qualities women drivers have over men are terrific road courtesy and exemplary common sense. They are more patient, more focused on getting "there" and back safely, and less interested in their NASCAR standing.
In the end, men are higher risk drivers. They get the most tickets. They have the most accidents. They are arrested most often for traffic violations and DUIs. There's more to driving than testing the performance limits of a car: back to, "Hold my beer; watch this."
Learn more about this author, Michael Patrick.
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