Am I the only person who gets really annoyed at those "woman-only" car insurance firms? Somehow they manage to be patronising to women, while offering a women-only service. At it's a waste of time anyway, because they could just offer women cheaper premiums than men, like the company I actually use.

I wonder how much of a fuss it would cause if I started white person only car insurance.

I was actually just going to say that I thought the insurance companies have known this for years. I mean, it cost significantly less to insure me at 16 than it did my brother, and that was 17 years ago. And that was before my brother totalled his car.

Yes, insurance companies have known this for a very long time. If there was ever *any* grain of truth to the notion of women being bad drivers, it would have been for the same reason that any adult who's inexperienced behind the wheel is a bad driver -- women used to drive rarely, therefore they weren't so likely to be good at it. Now that women drive as much as men, this old stereotype needs a stake in the heart. But men, particularly young men, have always been reckless, and that has less to do with driving experience than life experience.

In my hometown, insurance rates were four times for teen boys what they were for teen girls, in 1984, to the point where the phenomenon of girls getting cars and driving long before their brothers were allowed to was widespread. By the time we were all 16, every girl I knew had her learner's permit or her license; boys were often not allowed to get learner's permits until they were 18 because their parents couldn't afford having a teen boy on their insurance. My own brothers didn't drive until they were over 18 (one actually didn't get his permit until he was like 23 or so); I got mine when I was 16.

So yeah. If women have a fault as drivers, it may be overcaution, which leads people behind them to grumble about how bad they are, but doesn't lead to fiery death, unlike risk-taking behavior and general road assholery. Also, I've never heard of a woman killing anyone in a road rage incident. (Although, personally, I have come close. :-))

Gah.
So many things wrong with this.
For example, they point out that "But the death rate on motorcycles was nearly 32 times higher than for cars. One of the riskiest combinations in the database are men between ages 21 and 24 who drive motorcycles between midnight and 4 a.m. Their road fatality risk is 45,000 times higher than normal."

There are several obvious reasons why this might be, and only one of them is "the men riding the motorcycles are bad drivers." The person who dies isn't the only one who could have been the bad driver- all it takes is someone else to be a bad driver and hit a motorcyclist, and now you've got a dead motorcyclist, regardless of how good a driver that person is, or what gender.

Some women are good drivers, some men are terrible drivers and visa versa.

No doubt.

Actually, doesn't the motorcycle thing remind you of rape coverage?

"If only he hadn't been riding his motorcycle, he wouldn't have been killed by the inconsiderate motorist or overtired truck driver!" And, you know, the idea of teaching people to look for motorcycles and getting overtired truck drivers off the road never occurs to anyone. That might, in fact, be one of the very few areas where a crime mostly committed against men (because most motorcyclists are men) is blamed on the victim. (Of course, you can accidentally kill a cyclist, you can't accidentally rape someone, but the similarity just jumped out at me, since their stat describing people, mostly men, who are killed on a small, hard-to-see vehicle at a time when *other* drivers are most impaired is being used against the victims' driving ability.)

Now the thing is, though, you *can* statistically determine whether men or women are better drivers. This has nothing to do with your Aunt Petunia who has to pass every car on the road or your Grandpa Jeff who's driven for 60 years and never gotten so much as a parking ticket. The *statistic* is that men are more likely to drive aggressively, more likely to speed, more likely to drive in ways that are unsafe for the road, and that makes them less safe than women drivers. Moderating factors include age (young people in their teens are more reckless, in both sexes though more so for males, and less experienced, in both sexes; elderly people are likely to have impairments that make them worse drivers, such as untreated low vision and slower reaction times), and insurance companies actually found a correlation between marriage and accident rates. (Marriage, here, is serving as a proxy. It's not that getting married makes you slow down and drive carefully, it's that people who feel themselves to be settled, responsible adults are both more likely to drive carefully *and* more likely to get married. They don't actually check if you're really married -- I got my live-in boyfriend on my policy for years at Allstate -- although they may give gay people trouble.)

So yeah. We can actually say "women are safer drivers than men." We can also say "middle-aged adults are the best drivers, and both teens and the elderly suck." But your extremely responsible 17-year-old boy who played driving games since he was 10, clocked 1500 supervised driving hours before he got his license, and now drives every day to school, carefully and soberly and obeying all traffic laws as he goes, may be a better driver than your bipolar Aunt Stacey who's married, 45, and absolutely has to race the car next to her every time she's stopped at a light. Statistics are useless at telling you the actual characteristics of an individual; they just tell you the tendencies of a group.

great post, samhita, and excellent de-stereotypification, alara.

i've been really annoyed by all the "woman driver" comments on this footage of drivers (who you cannot see) sliding all over the road in this week's snow storm in portland, oregon:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zMzeiMJQrvk

one driver who very clearly stopped early on rather than bashing into every car on the road is a woman, who begs for help getting her three small children safely out of the car and out of the way.

I'm guessing part of the statistics is that men are more likely to do stupid things driving on porpus.

Ghost ridin the whip and all.

Jami, don't think too much about youtube comments, they are notoriously stupid.

Is that really Portland? King5 is a Seattle station, and as a long time Portlander, I don't recognize the intersection. The key to safety in such situations (aside from staying home) is studded tires. Studded tires!! Don't even know how often they saved my life, when I was a professional driver.

"(because most motorcyclists are men)"

I now live in an area that has a lot more motorcycles than I'm used to, and I've noticed this as well. Motorcycle riders are overwhelmingly male. Seeing a woman riding her own 'cycle is very rare.

Guess it's just the culture? I don't know it well enough, so I can't say for sure.

Male drivers have a 77 percent higher risk of dying in a car accident than women, based on miles driven.

If women have a fault as drivers, it may be overcaution, which leads people behind them to grumble about how bad they are, but doesn't lead to fiery death, unlike risk-taking behavior and general road assholery. Also, I've never heard of a woman killing anyone in a road rage incident.

If men are 77 higher risk of dying in a car accident, that means their recklessness is more of a risk than women's overcautiousness. And how many times do we hear that overcautiousness causes the most accidents? I feel bad for men under 25 who are good drivers who pay exorbitant insurance premiums so masculinity and recklessness should be examined if they want to lower their insurance premiums. (Yeah, that'll happen! Not!)

Statistically, the average woman is better than the average man, but the best drivers are mostly men.

The latter part comes from the fact that the best drivers are "professional" drivers - people who drive limos, salesmen - and they tend to be overwhelmingly male.

Yeah, teenage boys are lousy drivers, for the most part. A lot of girls have confidence problems (hence the stereotype) that doesn't allow them to make a quick decision or drive with traffic.

Just my take.

Statistically, the average woman is better than the average man, but the best drivers are mostly men.

Recklessness is skewed towards young men but women are better drivers overall.

A lot of girls have confidence problems (hence the stereotype) that doesn't allow them to make a quick decision or drive with traffic.

Or teenage boys have overconfidence problems, thereby leading to reckless behavior.

What about bus drivers? I see at least 50% female bus drivers where I live, and that's got to be a pretty difficult vehicle to maneuver.

Neither men nor women have any demonstrable advantage over the other when it comes to learning *how* to drive a vehicle. The statistical differences can pretty much all be explained by experience levels, personality issues (ie, men more likely to be overconfident or reckless, women more likely to be underconfident), and physical issues (old people become bad drivers because the body parts they need break down.)

So there's no reason why 50% of the bus drivers shouldn't be women (in fact many of the intangibles that count against women entering most professional driving jobs disappear -- you're not alone with a client like a taxi or limo driver, you're not away from home like a trucker or professional salesman, you don't work long hours and have to pull over to sleep in unsafe places like a trucker or a courier -- and if women are statistically more likely to be cautious, well, I want people who are driving slow-moving huge pieces of death metal through my city to be very careful.) And these bus drivers will clock enough driving hours to become very experienced. So yeah, bus drivers being women drives up the numbers for the "very experienced drivers" who are women.

I am of the opinion that the "women are bad drivers myth" originates with not enough female mechanical engineers. It's not that guys can't/don't see design flaws. The thing is, when your a 5'2" woman,you realize immediately that the clutch is too hard to access, there are multiple blind spots, and the seatbelt is strangling you.

Ditto that, Jessica.

Volvo recently came out with a concept car designed entirely by women; (http://auto.howstuffworks.com/volvo-concept.htm)
sadly, it's actually a radical idea.

I'm thinking for some reason of an old (female) friend of mine, who used to brag about doing 90 down a major city street at 2am. But my experience certainly confirms what this study says.

I don't usually care for "gender difference" studies, but this one's different because it doesn't make one of those idiotic essentialist arguments. The truth is that machismo is an ideology of noble suicide, and when it's reflected on the road...

In particular, I've noticed that men are much more likely to DWI. Asking for rides, and I say this as a male who can't drive due to a neurological impairment, is a threat to a man's male ego, so they gets their drinks and they takes their chances. Ever notice that, in pop culture, it's nearly always the woman who asks for a ride, as a matter of course, but men in non-pedestrian environments (unless they're big and powerful and have chauffers) almost never do?

Which is why I sometimes thank my lucky stars I can't drive, because who knows whether I'd be a good feminist if I didn't have to ask for rides.

I wish I thought this study would actually cut away at some of the driver machismo so that men ask for designated drivers and don't speed as much and so forth, but machismo is all about stubbornness, and I doubt this will slow the serious offenders down a bit.

Re cars designed by women, Jessica, you've inspired me to wonder if office furniture, television sets, computers, architecture, restrooms (of both genders), and even "feminine" environments like kitchens are excessively "male" due to the relative dearth of female human-factor engineers. A good question to ask, I think, and a good symbol for how the invisible world of society is also "engineered" by men to the discomfort of women.

Cheers,

TH

Interesting you should mention that, Tom... my best friend's house was hit by a drunk driver (male) last night. Her living room is a disaster.

Women often ask for rides because, I think, we are used to it - it's not too different to ask for a ride if drunk or if one doesn't want to walk home late at night, alone.

Back on topic - yes, a lot of things are engineered for men. While very tall men may be accounted for in designs, short women rarely are. Anecdotally, I heard a story about a short woman (under 5') who designed her kitchen to accomodate her needs. When the time came to sell the house, there was a line of people at the open house, beggging to buy a place that worked for them without redesign.

CVS recently redesigned their stores for women, assuming a shopper of 5'3 or 5'4 height.

Incidentally, lefties don't live as long as righties; my guess is that society is engineered for righties (think a stick shift car, knives, scissors, computer mouses).

Such research findings are valid--facts are only facts; the issue is etiology, along with the generalizations that people draw upon. My best explanation is that men are more likely to make poor decisions when they drive, such as driving while intoxicated or permitting their anger to impact their driving. Men are also socially encouraged to take more risks in general; look at how the U.S. armed forces markets itself as "an adventure." More risk leads to more accidents and more deaths and injuries.
Incidentally, I ride a motorcycle, and usually alone. I used to ride a 450 cc cruiser and now I ride a 150 cc Piaggio scooter. I always wear a helmet, and leather jacket. I completed the Motorcycle Safety Foundation basic course, and I never drive drunk or at excessive speed. I am a graduate student seeking my Ph.D. in Sociology; my specialty is sex-related differences in cognition.

Such research findings are valid--facts are only facts; the issue is etiology, along with the generalizations that people draw upon. My best explanation is that men are more likely to make poor decisions when they drive, such as driving while intoxicated or permitting their anger to impact their driving. Men are also socially encouraged to take more risks in general; look at how the U.S. armed forces markets itself as "an adventure." More risk leads to more accidents and more deaths and injuries.

Incidentally, I ride a motorcycle, and usually alone. I used to ride a 450 cc cruiser and now I ride a 150 cc Piaggio scooter. I always wear a helmet, and leather jacket. I completed the Motorcycle Safety Foundation basic course, and I never drive drunk or at excessive speed. I have had been responsible for only two accidents in 27 years of driving cars and cycles. I guess I am an exemplar for the auto insurance industry.

I am a graduate student seeking my Ph.D. in Sociology; my specialty is sex-related differences in cognition.

Why don't they drop the bullshit about men vs. women drivers, and take a look at senile old people and their driving habits? Seriously. Sometimes I swear they'll give anyone a license.

Tokaia -- insurance companies do. Seriously. Your rates go way up after 55. I'd like to see the government implement mandatory re-testing every five years after 55, but older people are politically *very* active and being kicked off the road can be a death sentence, in that it enforces isolation and helplessness and breeds depression (of course, *not* kicking certain elderly drivers off the road can be a death sentence for many innocent people, so I don't have a lot of sympathy for this argument, I'm just pointing out they'll fight tooth and nail to keep driving.)

TH, that's interesting. My husband is an albino, legally blind and not permitted to drive, so he has to ask for rides all the time, and I'm always driving him. I myself am a control freak. I *can't* ask for rides, and given how helpless a passenger is if the driver decides to screw around with them, I can't understand why so many women can. But then, I also don't drink, for pretty much the same reason -- I don't trust other people enough to be helpless or impaired around them. And I didn't think of this, but in some ways I'm probably a very "macho" driver, in a bad way -- I don't race people or suffer road rage from being passed, but I speed, I drive aggressively in conditions where there's a lot of traffic but the road is mostly moving at normal speed, and I've been known to jump red lights to avoid being stuck behind a truck. Haven't had an accident in fifteen years, but what happens when my reflexes start to go? Hopefully by then I'll have mellowed out. :-) But is the need for speed directly related in some way to the Captain Control thing? (I also won't ask for directions, but only because they're useless -- if you pull over and ask someone, they likely don't know, and if they do know, I don't understand them well enough to figure out what they're saying. I'd rather buy a map. Or ask my husband, who has a GPS in his head. :-))

Is overly aggressive driving related to the need for control? Men are more likely to be control freaks than women because men are more likely to be *able* to -- sexism makes it harder for women to exert control over their environment or expect it. If so, would we see women actually get to be worse drivers as equality of the sexes increases? :-) (I'd hope we'd see it the other way around, too...)

"Statistically, the average woman is better than the average man, but the best drivers are mostly men. The latter part comes from the fact that the best drivers are "professional" drivers...and they tend to be overwhelmingly male."

Sorry, but I'm going to have to take issue with this, not because I don't agree limo drivers et al. are predominantly male, but because it prompted a memory reel of every taxi ride I've ever had (three of which ended in accidents and numerous others in near accidents or at least moments frightening enough to make me gasp out loud), as well as the numerous occasions I've been barelled down on by a tractor trailer apparently trying to make his delivery on time. The category "professional driver" is too broad to make generalizations about driver quality, particularly when some "professional" drivers' profits depend on beating a clock, and / or driving for horrifically long periods, possibly with the help of chemical aids...plus the fact that a third party would foot the bill for accidents, insurance, etc., would certainly be a disinhibiting factor.

Since when did good driving equate to not getting into an accident?

I've known horrible drivers that never got into an accident and excellent drivers that have been hit by someone.

The Good/Bad driver dichotomy should not be based solely on risk assessment but on driving skills such as knowledge of the laws, road awareness, handling ability, knowledge of road courtesy rules, etc.

That said, the number one factor in determining a drivers overall skill level is who taught them how to drive. The better a driver that person was the better the driver the person they are teaching will be.

Sex in some ways determines the ability to excel in certain areas of driving (mostly due to the differences in how the minds process information), but this can be overcome with proper training and proper practice (as evidenced by the increasing number of female drivers in auto racing).

As to why it may seem females are worse drivers overall, I lay blame on the fact that most girls are not well taught in the skills necessary in driving. Most are glossed over by their parents in this regard. Some blame can also be placed on the fact that many girls don't care enough to put the level of interest in driving as boys do at that age (except when to impress the boys). These reasons, being social can easily be overcome by society. TEACH YOUR CHILDREN HOW TO PROPERLY DRIVE! This includes not just the laws of the road but also the rules of etiquette. I also highly highly suggest every parent spend the money to send their child to an advanced/performance driving course at a local speedway or through national groups like Skip Barber, Bondurant, Fast Lane, etc. These courses will teach your child the mechanics and physics of driving a car, preparing them for high speed maneuvering and driving in adverse conditions. The better prepared your child is for these unforeseen situations the more comfortable they will be driving daily, lowering their stress level will dramatically improve their driving.