I hear the stereotype come out of the mouths of comedians everywhere: Asian immigrants (not those from India, but rather China, Japan, Vietnam, and so on) in North America are slow or painfully cautious drivers. I’ve driven in regions with a large Asian population (Southern California, Toronto) and didn’t notice that they were driving any slower than anyone else. What’s the straight dope about this odd stereotype?
Well, anecdote != data, but I got a speeding ticket a few years ago, and had to attend driving class like a lot of people do. At the start of the class, the instructor asked everyone to state why they were there. There was an Asian man (he looked Korean to me, but I’m guessing) who had gotten a ticket for doing 40 in a 55 on the freeway. I didn’t know you could get a ticket for that, but there he was.
ETA: I think most of the characterizations of asians == poor drivers are baldly racist and unfounded. At best its sampling bias, which is arguably the case of my example above.
Nah, my wife is Chinese and she has more speeding tickets than I do.
I hate to admit it, but I agree with the stereotype. I can make the slow,overly-cautious asian driver association several times per day around here. The scientist in me tells me that it is just a confirmation bias, but that logic rarely overrides my irrate reaction.
This is the first time I’ve heard of the stereotype and have never encountered this in my life.
I’ve never heard of this stereotype, nor have I observed it. Here in the bay area, everybody across the board - Asians, caucasians, latinos, all of us - drive like bats out of hell. The rare slowpoke in the right-hand lane driving under the speed limit is usually an older caucasian, as far as I can remember.
You’re in Orlando - I expect that you have other local driving stereotypes which crowd it out, I would guess having to do with tourists and senior citizens.
This stereotype is very prevalent in the SF Bay area, often attached to comments about “DWO” - “Driving While Oriental”.
Interesting. My post crossed teela brown’s, and concerns the same area. I DO hear it.
If I moved from a leftie driving country to a rightie driving country I’d be cautious too.
Lefties are Japan and Korea until after WWII. BTW, Korea would have an American occupation force used to the right side but the Koreans would just be learning from a lifetime on the left.
I decided to test this one day and made sure to check who was driving every car that I thought was in the “too slow” category. It was far more varied than I thought it would be.
But I’m not convinced there aren’t groups that are represented more than others, needs more study.
Er, what? Anyone old enough to remember driving during the Japanese occupation is probably too blind to drive by this point. Besides, the majority of Koreans were too poor to have cars back then. Koreans are just as used to driving on the right as Americans are.
I’ve never heard the stereotype that Asians are slow drivers. (I’d like someone to try driving in Seoul and tell me Koreans drive slow.) I’ve heard that they’re BAD drivers, though. To be fair, middle-aged Asian women generally drive poorly, in my experience. Most of the time that’s because they learned how to drive at a fairly late age.
I haven’t noticed it so much, but I’m Asian, so maybe I’m giving my own race a pass. Personally, I drive like a bat out of hell. Fortunately all my cars are dogs, so I don’t really drive particularly fast. My inner racist/racial profiler/confirmation bias tells me that it’s a different race that’s driving slowly, especially between Paso Robles and Gilroy.
Around here, it’s old people, tourists and cell phone talkers that drive slow. The worst are old tourist cell phone talkers.
Not to repeat HazelNutCoffee, but that’s always been my understanding too. Many of my coworkers are chinese, and they really aren’t the best drivers. If I borrow the company car, the mirrors indicate someone driving with their head 6" from the wheel (except for the one that got busted off on a garage door last week).
I agree that late learning may play a key role; the two women I know only learned in their late 20s, and neither looks at all relaxed behind the wheel. Learning earlier probably doesn’t help though; talking to one chinese friend (a self admitted bad driver) about the lack of mirror checking we saw in Vancouver, he thinks there wasn’t any point in China, 'cause there’s going to be a car there no matter what, so just go ahead and change lanes. :eek:
I spend way too much time on 880. There are very few older people who dare rush hour, so I don’t see them. The #1 culprit in this is the cell phone yacker, but I’m sorry to say that a large percentage of those who either drive very slowly in the left lane or who leave truly inordinate amounts of space when traffic is moving at 10 mph are Asians (almost never Indians.) Usually women, who seem absolutely petrified.
I don’t think the slow driver in the right lane population is like this, but I don’t notice that much since at least those people are in the right place.
Of course this doesn’t mean even a significant percentage of Asian drivers are slow, only that a significant proportion of slow drivers are Asian.
As for the stereotype, at the end of the Shattner roast, Shattner told George Takei that he was lucky that Shattner let an Asian man drive. So it is out there.
The first time I ever heard about this stereotype was from a Korean guy who, after I’d told him about my getting a DWI, told me he’d once gotten a DWO.
This is purely anecdotal, but in the case of Japan I know that it’s possible (and, in fact, fairly common) to get a driver’s license without ever having to take an applied driving test. Combine that with the fact that public transportation in a lot of Japan is scarily efficient, and you get a lot of people who simply don’t get much experience driving.
I hate to perpetrate stereotypes (which aren’t bad, it’s how you use them that can be bad), but I have to give this one some credibility. When driving around the Toronto area for a year (lots of non-Indian-subcontinent Asians there), any time there was someone abnormally slow, or abnormally cautious to the point of annoyingness, it was invariably either (a) Asian or (b) I flew by too fast to get a good look.
In December '07 when driving between Las Vegas and San Diego, it was the same thing. The abnormally slow/cautious drivers were almost always Asian. Even my wife was pointing out – surprised – that the stereotype was true.
This is rather shocking. I thought American driving tests were too damn easy.
However, I would guess that native born Japanese make up a pretty small proportion of the Asian population here in the USA.
In my decade living in Seoul, I don’t think I ever saw anyone driving faster than about 2 mph. Bad traffic! 
There may be a kind of classic selection effect at work: In some areas of the U.S., largescale immigration from Asia is a relatively recent phenomenon, and so an Asian driver has a higher probability of being a recent immigrant – and recent immigrants have a higher chance of being “new drivers.” I had a number of classmates and friends from China in my graduate program, and none of them had a car (or opportunity to drive one) before they moved to the U.S. Their driving wasn’t any worse than that of a teenager who’s been driving for less than a year. Since they weren’t adolescents, though, they didn’t think “bat out of hell” mode was cool, so they tended to opt for caution more than teenagers would.
Which makes it that much worse the minute they get more than two feet of free road. You should see my dad drive. It’s a miracle our family still lives.