Women are better drivers than men.
Relax…that’s just a cheap shot to make you keep reading. The topic is right up there with sex, religion, politics and money. If your holiday dinners need a shot of trouble, change things up this year and talk about driving.
A recent Irish study offers some interesting findings. Over the course of 13 weeks using black boxes installed in cars researchers zeroed in on acceleration, braking, cornering and speed. Drivers were provided with feedback on how to improve. So, once an error was pointed out, who would endeavour to change?
Read more: Seniors surprised by own bad habits after driving retest
Twenty per cent of men corrected course; 80 per cent of women did. The 54 participants were 17 to 22 years old, traditionally considered by insurance companies as the group at highest risk for collisions. All knew they were being monitored, and half could access their results to see how they were doing as the project evolved.
The study actually concluded that “young women are much better at learning from their driving mistakes than their male counterparts,” not that they were better drivers. That’s really just splitting hairs; being unwilling to acknowledge and correct your mistakes does make you a worse driver.
I work with a lot of professional driving instructors in many different capacities. Sometimes it’s driver’s education for teens, sometimes for seniors, sometimes track days at very high speeds, sometimes off-road courses at very slow speeds. I ask every instructor the same question: generally speaking, who is more receptive to learning new skills? And every instructor for the last decade has told me the same thing: women.
This isn’t a driving thing at all, it’s a psychological thing. Some people are more competitive than others and see every driving situation as something to win. Some find it difficult to understand that the fastest driver on a course is the smoothest driver, not the one making the most noise. Some people believe that if you can afford an expensive high performance car you somehow – mystically –must also have the ability to drive it. Driving is a skill. For some it is a talent, but for most of us, it is a skill.
A student at the Bridgestone Canadian Winter Driving School.
Graeme Fletcher, Driving
Many stereotypes are rooted in some kind of truth. I, a woman, have a lousy sense of direction. I prefer written directions over a map, though I do want the map to orient myself. I don’t consider any of this much more than a simple fact; we all learn in different ways, and I expect teachers to teach the student, not the curriculum.
I’ve driven with some spectacular drivers, and some who are less so. I’ve driven with people who I know are alive only because their car saved them, and I’ve driven with people who I believe should have their airbags on the outside of their cars to protect the people around them. Honestly, gender has seldom been a defining factor, but when it has been, it did indeed come down for the most part to stereotypical indicators: males who drove over their heads, and females who were too distracted.
Hard statistics show that young men are more aggressive behind the wheel; it’s why their insurance rates are the highest. What I find troubling about this Irish study (as the mother of two young men), is that even after errors have been pointed out and directives given to improve, so many failed to do so. Maybe they couldn’t be bothered; maybe they believed they knew better; maybe they just didn’t care.
A driving record develops very much like a credit rating. For young drivers, starting that driving record as early as possible will lighten the insurance load years down the road.
Getty Images, Archive
We bitch and moan consistently about the sorry state of the drivers on our roads. Everybody is a terrible driver, if you ask everyone else. If only our new drivers were actually trained to drive rather than just pass a test. If only we retested everyone every fill-in-the-blank years to weed out the speed junkies, the slowpokes, the left-lane bandits, the distracted and the addled. If only lawyers stopped getting guilty people off on a technicality, and if only we had zero tolerance for alcohol and drugs and texting behind the wheel.
Except, extrapolate the results of that small study. Even with access to information to be safer, to be better, there is a significant portion of people who have no interest. Even if it’s youthful posturing, what happens until they outgrow it? I am a firm nonbeliever in programs that spy on your kid when you’re not in the car. If you don’t trust them, you don’t give them the keys. Sound decision-making skills are never developed when they’re created by a shock collar.
How does that saying go? When you know better, you do better?
Maybe not.
Next week, I take a look at Ford’s Driving Skills for Life – a program for teen drivers.
Twitter: @TweeetLorraine
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