Dec 15 2009
Motorsports Pro Cheryl Tay wonders if men or women are more dangerous on roads.
To Each His Own
I was just catching up with some friends over drinks the other night and the conversation came round to bad driving behaviour on the road.
We were recalling and exchanging our experiences with feisty angst and soon started listing causes of bad driving behaviour.
Taxi drivers, bus drivers, P-platers, teenagers, and all was fine until someone said, “Lady drivers!”
As I happened to be the only female at the table, all eyes turned to me and I could feel the indignation building up within me as I inhaled sharply.
You see, I can’t entirely blame the guy. The stereotype about female drivers being inferior drivers has been around since forever.
Hell, even I am guilty of swearing “It has to be a lady driver!” under my breath when I see a woman holding up traffic or taking five tries to get into a lot.
This argument about men making better drivers than women has been going on forever.
But nothing has been able to resolve this argument in favour of women; despite insurance companies worldwide having evidence that men have more aggressive driving habits than women and are more likely to be involved in accidents.
Think about it, men generally spend more time behind the wheel than women.
So by clocking more driving hours, more mileage on the road and becoming more familiar with the car, you would think that it’s only natural to become better at driving.
I’m sorry; I can’t help but beg to differ.
Taxi drivers spend the most time on the roads but I can’t say that they are the best of drivers.
Besides, spending more time on the road than women and yet having a higher rate of crashing? I wonder who’s more dangerous.
Essentially, men and women have different personality traits that lead to different driving styles.
Men have innate risk-taking tendencies which may result in better control of the car, or have them negated by recklessness due to overconfidence and too much risk.
Women on the other hand, are usually disinterested in cars and their risk-adverse tendencies help to keep them out of trouble.
To me, simple things like not acknowledging acts of courtesy or intentionally not giving way make fine examples of bad driving behaviour.
Let’s not even get to tailgating, reckless overtaking or failing to obey traffic signs.
And both men and women are guilty of such acts. I mean honestly, does putting up a hand to say thank you really require a lot of energy?
If you ask me, I think driving behaviour is unique to each individual, regardless of gender.
A recent study by neuroscientists from University of California, Irvine, concluded that “bad driving may in part be genetically based”.
Results showed that people with a particular gene variant drove more than 20 percent worse than people without it.
Therefore, I feel that the greatest cause of bad driving behaviour is the human factor.
One’s personality, attitude towards driving, as well as respect for other motorists on the road is most crucial.
An outspoken character is more likely to drive aggressively as compared to a timid one. Likewise, adopting and practising good driving habits help to keep the roads safer.
Can I also advise to try and avoid driving if you’re feeling sleepy? This small act of consideration may just save lives.
One driver’s behaviour is responsible for the other driver’s behaviour as their actions directly affect and impact each other on the roads.
Let me give you a scenario:
This car was annoying me as he zipped in and out behind me, trying to overtake. Finally he ends up on the lane next to me and tries to get into my lane ahead of me.
Because of how he irritated me earlier, I intentionally refuse to let this car in, so I follow the car in front of me very closely. Alas, a brief moment of negligence caused me to rear-end the car in front of me.
Very simply, one thing leads to another and we are all part of a web of intricate driving relationships when we are on the roads.
And that’s the beauty of driving – How each driver silently communicates with each other as they move in mutual co-operation.
Before I go, I just have one favour to ask.
When you drive, make sure you are not guilty of committing the same act before you make a wild accusation that it must be a woman behind that bad driving.
Not one to hanker after the latest handbag from Chanel or the newest lipstick colour from Bobbi Brown, Cheryl Tay instead spends her time checking out the hottest cars and keeping up with motorsports like Formula 1. The best way to express this automotive passion of hers is through words, as reflected through her writings (www.cheryltay.wordpress.com). Said to ‘have fuel in her blood’ and ‘a mind of nothing but cars and motorsports’, the 23-year-old freelance motoring writer hopes to share this passion with more like-minded people and also reach out to the female motoring audience so as to increase awareness of the significant share of voice that females have in today’s automotive world.
6 responses so far
Before we debate on the topic of bad drivers, we have to first specify what constitutes to bad drivers? Obeying to road manners or just following the rules of the road? You can obey all road rules yet still be a bad driver… you can have road manners and give way to motorist all the time, but did it cause road hazard to other motorist around you? What i am trying to get at is that MOST (not all) Singapore Motorist Driver or pedestrians are NOT aware of their surroundings while driving. Singapore Drivers or pedestrians are simply BO Charp (DO not care about other road users)… This then would bring about very bad driving habits to our roads… and unfortunately we do import bad driving habits from our neighbors, eg Indonesia, Bangkok and Malaysia.
So how do we define what is bad driving? I myself cannot phantom the definition as there is too much fine details to describe the road situation, time and place.
Eg, merging into any expressway, do we keep our speeds up to merge at the speed limit? or do we enter at our own pace and speed? It all depends, if there is a slower vehicle in-front of us, behind us or next to us as we enter…
OR
Over taking a slower vehicle, do you consider the speed of the overtaking lane? is there a fast car approaching that if you were to switch lanes, your speed is way too slow that causes the fast car to slow down just for you?
Since there are many scenarios at any given situation on the roads? How then does one learn what is the best situation at that point? And because of that, MOST (not all) female drives fail to act and think fast enough… its because of these many different situations that men and woman would drive differently, and hence a disparity to the different driving technics.
There’s no necessity to quibble over what constitutes dangerous driving. Very few women drivers are guilty of dangerous driving. You can accuse them of being ultra cautious but driving definitely not dangerous. Who ploughed into a bus stop? Who crashed onto an MRT track? Who drink and drive? Who drove without a licence and killed an Indian man in Little India? All males. You get the picture.
Doesnt matter whether the men or women behind the wheel, if they dont have safety in mind, like to show off than accident sure to happen.. especially those who just got their licence & having a night out with friends, both men & women, drink… right, so.. who to blame?
As what they had said, traffice police should have a part too, before they given the licence, they should see what happening on the road, let them understand.. how it feel to be behind the wheel.
Jeez. Star blogger yes… coherent writer no.
First few paragraphs begin by discussing “bad driving behaviour”. Discussions in later paragraphs center around dangerous driving, differences in rates of accident between women and men. If you were in school and I were your GP tutor, I’d tell you that you failed to make your argument. But never mind that, I’m not your GP tutor =)
Female drivers are less dangerous, that’s true. Hard to hit anything when you’re crawling along in the right lane at 80 kph right? My observation is that female drivers aren’t intentionally bad. It’s just that women have poorer peripheral vision and lower situational awareness, and hence are less cognizant of their surroundings, and do not react to peripheral cues. I think this is not an unfair statement to make, as it’s a fact that there are far less female pilots (commercial or military) than male.
While good behaviour equates to being less dangerous, being less dangerous does not equate to good behaviour. The relationship does not work both ways.
However, I would have to qualify by saying this lack of SA is the case for most Singaporean drivers. Happily crawling along in the overtaking lane even when a faster vehicle comes along right behind them. Say what you (Jme) want about our neighbours “bad habits”, but many a times, I’ve had Malaysian-registered cars switch lanes just to give way to me. Much less frequently does that happen with a Singaporean car. I find it to be the same elsewhere in the world (not just Asia), people give way when there’s a faster vehicle. Singaporeans are just bad drivers in general.
Finally, don’t try to argue by quoting cases like Danica Patrick being 100% confirm chop guarantee being a better driver than me. That would be indisputable. Don’t bother to tell me how you’re a better driver than me, and you know more about cars than me. That might be true (but there could be some dispute), but it does not add merit to your argument. We’re not considering the statistical outliers here, my point is that the majority of women are more guilty than the majority of men of bad driving behaviour, usually because of their lower awareness of the surroundings.
Recently, I recently experienced a case where I had half filtered into the middle lane from the rightmost, and 2 cars from the left lane simultaneously swerved into the middle lane abruptly, one behind me and one in front of me, effectively sandwiching me. As I swerved back into the right lane to avoid them, thus endangering myself, I noticed that both were women, both had not even noticed me, and were happily cruising along. True story.
Oops this post is 1 year old. But it’s a topic that never dies. Right? =)
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