by Stan Dyer

Created on: June 19, 2008

I am writing to the "men" side of the argument simply because I had to choose one or the other. The truth is that a variable such as a person's sex has very little to do with whether or not he or she will be a good driver.

When determining whether or not a person will be a good driver, it is easier to examine how that person approaches other aspects of life than it is to lump all people with similar chromosomes into one group and believe all will behave exactly the same way. If a person is serious about responsibility, follows rules well, and can "play well with others", that person is likely to be a better driver no matter if the person in question is a man or a woman. On the other hand, any person who is irresponsible, does not follow the rules, and cannot be courteous when sharing the roads, avenues and boulevards, is less likely to be a good driver. The problem lies in the aspect of our society that leads us to sort, divide and prejudge people based on physical characteristics more than on the content of character.

If I owned a company and I needed to select an employee to drive for me, I certainly would want to choose the employee with the best skills. In such a selection, it would be silly and erroneous for me to separate the men from the women before making a selection. It would be much more wise and productive for me to acquire copies of various applicants' driving records and review those. Those records would at least reveal something about the driving ability of each if not say more than a word or two about individual character. It would not surprise me at all to review every one of those driving records and not be able to find any correlation between the sex of the driver and the quality of his or her record and ability. The very act of saying one sex or the other drives better without any documentation or other verifiable proof makes about as much sense as believing that one or the other of two identical cars will last longer simply because it is has a better paint job.

The point is that, without more information, it is impossible to make such a determination without exposing an unfounded prejudice. Other aspects such as age, experience or other measurable factors may have some bearing but the lone aspect of sex is not enough to make an accurate, reliable and verifiable determination. Anyone who wants to take sides on either side of this issue will have to provide years of documented research as proof or resign to the fact that his or her opinion is just exactly that, an opinion.

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