Men vs Women: who are overall better drivers? :p (racing, cop, America)
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I'm all for gender equality, but facts are facts! Statistically, women are more likely to be texting and putting on make up, talk on the phone, and such. However, men drive more aggressively. But sometimes it's better to drive more aggressively than drive stupidly. Also, men as a whole are more into car culture, like working on cars, driving cars, collecting cars. Being a part of car culture, you will know more about driving than those who usually only drive to get from Point A from Point B.
No, it's because women drive vastly fewer miles. I've already posted the studies that women get into more low speed accidents than men. There are fewer high speed accidents than low speed accidents, but most of the high speed accidents are men. Still it's fewer accidents overall for men than women, even if the ones that men do have, have more damage.
Vastly? Are you including long haul truckers, UPS truckers, police and fire personnel on the mens side? Do you think its fair to compare on those terms? When I walk down the street and see a couple getting into a car, well more than half the time the woman is going over to the drivers side. Soccer mom's anyone? Since the Mancession of 2008, its increasingly women that have the means to be able to own and operate cars in the 21 - 45 age group. They don't drive for J.B. Hunt, UPS, Fed Ex, or NASCAR or Formula 1 in any significant numbers but... neither do the majority of men. So lets throw professional drivers out of this.
Road trips with my father as a kid were holy terror. He totaled three cars before I left home at age 18. My mother never drove during that time. She learned to drive after her retirement at age 62 in Florida. Before I did! I lived in NYC I didn't learn to drive till I was 30. She had already been driving two years at that point. She was a natural. So was I. So is my brother. He is an over the road tractor trailer driver. Both of us would go to sleep in a car driven by our mother. We won't even get in a car driven by our father (wouldn't, he doesn't drive anymore). So much for objective, large sample, peer reviewed, research.
There isn't any way my mother can ever touch the sheer number of miles driven by my father. He had a 30 year head start. Nevertheless, she is the FAR better driver.
I'm all for gender equality, but facts are facts! Statistically, women are more likely to be texting and putting on make up, talk on the phone, and such. However, men drive more aggressively. But sometimes it's better to drive more aggressively than drive stupidly. Also, men as a whole are more into car culture, like working on cars, driving cars, collecting cars. Being a part of car culture, you will know more about driving than those who usually only drive to get from Point A from Point B.
It's difficult to believe that you really have any feminist sympathies with a post like this. Do you know how many men can't change a flat tire? The age of the mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, macho man about town ended a while back. The Automobile forum just may be the last bastion of pre-Suffragette group think. Why am I surprised to discover this. The last house I lived in, there was a neighbor guy who collected old Citroens. He used to let his wife drive one of them. Then I noticed that even when I saw them together in any of the others... she was always driving. Well... I don't drive that much anymore either because of Glaucoma, but still I was surprised to learn that the collection, and the interest, in the vintage Citroens was hers! Go to a Classic Car show sometime and see how many single women (or women that are coupled) are there to gawk at the cars!
As far as physical capabilities of actually controlling the car yes they would be, that is really not something that is debatable. Statistically women are going to be better drivers because they take less risks, less aggressive etc. They aren't better at handling a car, they make better choices. There is not many of them saying to their friends "Hey gals, watch this!".
Ha ha. No, there's no "watch this!" going on in my life. I spend most of my time behind the wheel trying to anticipate what stunts the idiots around me are going to try next. That makes me a careful, good driver. It doesn't mean that I'm particularly skillful. I've been on black ice and hydroplaned and didn't panic. I've managed to get out of the way when it looked as though someone was going to hit me. It doesn't make me stunt driver material.
The person who hit me was female, 20s.
The person who almost rear-ended me at an intersection was female, 20s. No traffic, so I drove through the intersection.
My mother was rear-ended while stopped at a light by a male, 20s.
My father was T-boned by a male, 20s.
My 17 year old son was hit by a middle aged guy, but it was my son's fault.
Son's friend, 18, totaled the new pick-up daddy gave him - on the first day.
My older brother somehow managed to total my father's Mercedes, his pride and joy, in a city in a 35 mph zone.
Well I guess it's going to be skewed by personal experience. I've had accidents involving both men and women. One woman backed into my ex-boyfriend's car. One woman also backed up into my hubby's car. A guy caused a huge accident on the Cross Bronx Expressway when I was about 12. I really don't know because it depends on the driver, not the driver's junk. I've seen both genders drive stupidly. I can say in my experience that men are the way more emotional drivers. They get angry and try to punish other drivers and retaliate for imagined offenses. They make mountains out of molehills and freak out at every turn (no pun intended, but there it is.) There has to be a good reason why young males have to spend the most to be insured, so I would probably say younger men are a lot more risky than say, older females.
Men are better drivers. Or, I should say, men have greater ability to drive than women.
All you have to do is look at Formula 1. If women were better drivers than men, you'd see all the male drivers replaced with female ones. But that's not the case. The greatest drivers in history are all male, and the few women who do race professionally don't come close to their level of skill.
Obviously, some women are better drivers than some men. But overall as a gender? It's definitely men.
Another thing you aren't taking into account is that genders are taught from a very young age that boys should play with cars and other vehicles and be mechanically inclined, so you have a higher proportion of males who will pursue those interests. Girls are not encouraged to play with cars etc. These industries and hobbies that have more men in them will also discourage women from participating simply because men may feel threatened or may just not want women involved in the "boys' club." They have a different camaraderie about it where they don't want to interact with females in those areas.
How can you accurately say the greatest drivers have been men when we haven't had enough female drivers to even compare simply because they're not driving AT ALL.
That's like saying women are the best at giving birth to children and men must really suck at it because we haven't seen any great birthing from them as a gender. How can you compare that, it makes no sense.
If Person A is encouraged to pursue a hobby and turn it into a profession, is given support and has a comfortable path surrounded by like minded dudes, it will be generally easier for that person to excel at that profession. If you have Person B trying to break in but finding that she isn't welcome or wanted or she has to fight harder just to be taken seriously before saying or doing ANYTHING, then you have a harder time getting to the same place as Person A because Person A has the red carpet rolled out for him.
Your argument is nonsensical. We can easily also determine using your logic that the worst drivers in history have all been male as well.
It's difficult to believe that you really have any feminist sympathies with a post like this. Do you know how many men can't change a flat tire? The age of the mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, macho man about town ended a while back. The Automobile forum just may be the last bastion of pre-Suffragette group think. Why am I surprised to discover this. The last house I lived in, there was a neighbor guy who collected old Citroens. He used to let his wife drive one of them. Then I noticed that even when I saw them together in any of the others... she was always driving. Well... I don't drive that much anymore either because of Glaucoma, but still I was surprised to learn that the collection, and the interest, in the vintage Citroens was hers! Go to a Classic Car show sometime and see how many single women (or women that are coupled) are there to gawk at the cars!
My husband couldn't change a tire until I pretty much forced him to and he told me he was terrified of attempting it and had a panic attack. I on the other hand have no qualms about attempting repairs on pretty much anything. And I don't admire cars, I prefer the look of airplanes.
How can you accurately say the greatest drivers have been men when we haven't had enough female drivers to even compare simply because they're not driving AT ALL.
That's like saying women are the best at giving birth to children and men must really suck at it because we haven't seen any great birthing from them as a gender. How can you compare that, it makes no sense.
And you think my argument is nonsensical.
Such a cop out answer. It also shows you know NOTHING about motorsports.
Do you have any idea how much money it takes to race professionally? Do you even have any idea how much a set of slicks goes for an F1 car? Nope, you don't. Racing teams only hire the best drivers they can. If a female could drive just as well as the men, they'd be doing it. It's a highly lucrative career, Michael Schumacher is worth over 1 Billion. So your excuse is that women simply aren't doing it because... why? Make any excuse you want here, it's BS.
There was a time when there weren't any black baseball players too. Guess what, the good players were found out and hired to play, because they could help the team win. And newsflash, there's a LOT more women out there than there are blacks in this country, so if you really think that there are no female racing drivers because of a lack of opportunities to try it, you are mistaken.
Next you're going to tell me that women compete at the same level as men in tennis and basketball.
Such a cop out answer. It also shows you know NOTHING about motorsports.
Do you have any idea how much money it takes to race professionally? Do you even have any idea how much a set of slicks goes for an F1 car? Nope, you don't. Racing teams only hire the best drivers they can. If a female could drive just as well as the men, they'd be doing it. It's a highly lucrative career, Michael Schumacher is worth over 1 Billion. So your excuse is that women simply aren't doing it because... why? Make any excuse you want here, it's BS.
There was a time when there weren't any black baseball players too. Guess what, the good players were found out and hired to play, because they could help the team win. And newsflash, there's a LOT more women out there than there are blacks in this country, so if you really think that there are no female racing drivers because of a lack of opportunities to try it, you are mistaken.
Next you're going to tell me that women compete at the same level as men in tennis and basketball.
You can look at any number of industries and find that there are more women working there today than in the past (as a percentage of the work force). Why do you think this is? Is it because women weren't physically/mentally capable or because of changing social trends that make it more acceptable for women to work? It's a complex conversation that can be accurately boiled down to a simple point. Men have historically controlled the career trajectories of women and particularly in the past, women were only to do womanly things as decided by men. Women weren't shying away from various careers due to personal ability. It was due to family and social pressures to do something else (often by force). Anyone who doesn't recognize this as fact is going to struggle quite a bit going forward.
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