It’s probably a highly culturally influenced preference, though.
For many years, me and my guy friends have had the usual practice that the vehicle owner does the driving - my car, I drive. His car, he drives. My landlord will let me drive his stuff up to the larger and/or CDL-requiring vehicles, or when towing a trailer, but that has more to do with my lack of the training/licensing needed for those than my gender.
I’ve also had a number of guys let me fly their airplanes.
It may be that I’m seen as more competent with these things than the average woman by those particular men. Men I don’t know, or who don’t know me, sometimes express surprise at this. Thus, I think it’s still largely culturally influenced although the tendency is not as strong as it once was.
I think both genders have their strengths and weaknesses. I think that, on the whole, men understand the art of driving better than woman in terms of analyzing the traffic situation, anticipating adjustments, and employing good driving strategy.
On the other hand, when you hear about road rage, the overwhelming number of cases involve men. When they say that their accidents are because of women driving too slowly, what they mean is that they want to speed so they become impatient, act rashly, and get in a wreck. Blaming women for their impatience is a copout. Wait, and pass when it is safe to do so. THAT is good, safe driving. Don’t blame others if you can’t or won’t do it.
The question there is whether someone men are innately better at all that, or if it is culturally influenced. Do parents put more effort into teaching their sons to drive well? Do men have more training, perhaps work related, that leads to more skillful driving? Do we expect men to do better at all that?
There is no reason I can see that women somehow can’t “analyze the traffic”, “anticipate adjustments”, and “employ good driving strategy” as well as men do, other than training and experience.
As for traits that MIGHT be based in part on differences between men and women - men are on average better at spatial relationships (an aid to tight maneuvering and backing up) and women are on average better at multi-tasking (helpful in paying attention to the big picture of what’s going on and/or handling kids in the car while driving). That’s on average (some women have extraordinary spatial ability and some men are fantastic multi-taskers) and doing those tasks sufficiently well to be a good driver is well within the capability of the average man or woman. So far, the only thing I’ve seen indicative of those in this thread is that women, apparently, getting into slightly more fender-benders than men (I’m assuming slow-speed tight maneuvering and/or backing up). This is more than compensated for the “road rage”/“testosterone-fueled” crashes the men are more prone to (women can also have road rage, it’s just less common).
It probably starts at a much earlier age. How many boys vs. girls get radio-controlled cars to play with? Pedal cars? (Or electric toy cars these days.) And video games (good training for hand-eye coordination and reflexes)?
This study is 20 years old but I suspect it probably still holds pretty close to true today (bolding mine):
One thing that may have changed since then is a recall reading somewhere (I forget where) that young women are closing the gap with young men in terms of auto accidents. The cause seems to be distracted driving for them (they are texting or something with their cell phone).
Your buddy can have his opinions of course, but it sounds like they are based on a few of his own (biased?) experiences.
Insurance companies set rates based on extensive analysis of masses of driving data. If they offer lower rates to women, it’s because women are better drivers.
P.S. Here’s a true anecdote about a driver (call him Speedster Steve) with similar opinions to your buddy.
Speedster Steve told me indignantly that he was being prosecuted for breaking the speed limit and dangerous driving.
Apparently he was on a narrow road and overtook above the speed limit on a blind bend, causing an oncoming car to swerve into a ditch.
He admitted the facts, but said it was entirely the fault of the driver he was following - because she was a woman driving at the posted speed limit, and he was such a skilled driver that this annoyed him and he had to overtake. :smack:
I don’t mean immediate sexism between the people involved, I mean deep rooted cultural sexism. The sort that has the man paying for meals more often than not.
Insurance companies give lower rates per unit time to people who have lower expected claims in $'s per unit time. That’s the only thing you can say about how insurance rates are set, or at least what’s the economically rational basis for setting them.
‘Safe driver’* OTOH to most people would be defined as per mile not per unit time, and accidents of a given severity generally speaking, not $ amount of claim for car damage.
And this is pretty relevant to the minor differences in insurance rates by sex for people >~30 yrs old, because men drive more miles in more expensive cars on average. And (see link above) in some places in recent years in the US car insurance rates for middle aged women are actually slightly higher than for men rather than slightly lower though latter situation is more usual.
For people under 30 it’s reasonable to suppose the larger difference is less safe driving per mile by young males than young females. For people older than that it’s not clear insurance rates say women are safer drivers.
*assuming that’s what meant by ‘better driver’, insurance companies do not price for people’s driving skills per se, only the accident claims they’ll generate.
Female, and I always prefer to drive. Mostly because being in the passenger seat when someone is driving too fast, tailgating, or driving in a herky-jerky way is very stressful to me.
Call me crazy, but to me, the point – the only point – of driving is to safely and calmly get from one point to another point without harming or harassing anyone. Lots of men and a surprising number of women will disagree.
Not just to you and what’s more frustrating thing about it is, that it doesn’t get you there faster either.
In general I would agree, for me it’s something of a chore to get me from A-to-B, except when I’m abroad on holiday, where driving is becoming exploring and actually enjoyable.
I used to make regular trips between Des Moines, Iowa and Chicago, Illinois (about 350 miles). Invariably the people in my car would take naps so I had to find things to distract myself from the utter boredom that is that drive.
One of the things I would do is do the math in my head on how much sooner I would get home if I added 5 mph or whatever to my speed. On long trips a bit more speed can add up but it became quickly apparent to me that driving like a maniac around town is near worthless. The time you save getting home is negligible…especially when you consider traffic lights and whatnot.
All speeding and tailgating got you was a less safe drive, a risk of getting pulled over by the police and almost no upside. Yet over and over again I see people impatiently pushing through traffic as if the minute or two they might get home sooner is a matter of life and death.
That pushing through traffic actually becomes a matter of life and death for everyone else and is many times the reason for traffic jams, yet it generally has little to no benefit.
I’m spending about 3 hours every day driving and that boredom needs killing, my solution is Audiobooks.
This is obviously an extreme case and I don’t agree with that guy, but I think there is some merit to the general notion that hyper cautious drivers frustrate the heck out of other people and can thereby cause them to act recklessly.
One example I see a lot of is when drivers are overly nervous about making a left turn due to oncoming traffic. I’ve seen many cases where this results in back-ups and honking and such from the people waiting behind them, and in some instances I’ve actually seen people just give up and go around and ahead of them. I don’t recall ever seeing an actual accident result, but I would guess this type of thing does happen.
Not that I buy this but I had it described to me by a policeman acquaintance.
He said (and I’m paraphrasing), the biggest cause of accidents is not speeding but in fact failure to yield the right of way when appropriate. This includes keeping your right of way when it is yours already or yours to take. He then said that he feels women tend to inappropriately give up their own right of way more and this thwarts other drivers who do not expect this behavior. His example was at a traffic circle where “a woman driver” already in the circle (who has the right of way in this instance) slowed down to a crawl to let another driver into the circle. This caused a driver behind her at the speed limit to rear end her. He called this “women causing accidents” because one should never give up one’s right of way for courtesy unless no other drivers are behind you.
He said men do this too but it is predominately women who yield their right of way inappropriately.
