In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Women Behind the Wheel

Jill

This shouldn’t be too surprising: Women are more likely to be passengers in vehicles than men are. That is, men are more likely to take the wheel and women are more likely to go along for the ride.

Also not surprising: The face/palm way that the Freakonomics guy addresses the issue:

Why do men dominate the wheel? In the past, physical factors were important. My grandmother learned to drive only after the introduction of automatic transmission and power steering, which made the task much less physically demanding. But driving today’s cars requires little strength. In addition, our roads are engineered to be quite forgiving, for example with very long reaction times permitted by the system.

What else might be responsible? Cultural factors? Social ones? Psychological differences? Logistics? Animal instinct? Historical inertia?

Furthermore, is this state of affairs due to men’s preferences, women’s, or both?

And should we care?

What in the world could be responsible for the fact that when men and women ride in cars together, men are more likely to drive? Hmm… mysterious.

98 thoughts on Women Behind the Wheel

  1. I suspect women multi-task in the car more than men, rather than passing off small tasks to the passenger (answer the cell phone, change the CD in the player, pass the cracker back to the toddler, scrabble in the purse for chapstick, etc), and because of this husbands are afraid we’re not focused on the road, even if we’ve never had an accident. They’d be okay with us driving if we actually drove and asked someone else to fish under the seat for Baby’s sneaker.

  2. If men like to drive so much, does that mean they chauffer the kids around more too?

    Somehow I doubt.

    Whenever we went somewhere as a family, my father would always drive. There was like, no discussion.

  3. My grandmother learned to drive only after the introduction of automatic transmission and power steering, which made the task much less physically demanding.

    Really? Really? Changing gears is too “physically demanding” for fragile women to handle? I learned to drive on a car that had both manual transmission and manual steering. I was not physically strong at the time, far from it, and I had no trouble. I have to wonder if the guy has either never driven a car with manual steering or a manual transmission, or if he really thinks women are that fragile and delicate.

  4. Easily explained by double sexism. Sexist men insist on control, sexist women insist on being served/chauffeured, and egalitarian couples are outnumbered by sexist ones.

  5. I’m sure, looking back on past relationships, that it has every single thing to do with the fact the most men think most women are shitty drivers.

    That said, I hate driving and when I go somewhere with my boyfriend, he drives at my request 🙂

  6. Physical factors? Give me a break! The person who drives is the person who is moving everyone else in the car around; i.e. the person in charge. Naturally, this has to be a man. At least, according to many men it does.
    When my grandparents were young, my grandfather was in an accident that left him unable to drive, so my grandmother became the family chauffeur. She not only could drive a stick shift with no power steering or brakes, she could start the car with a crank. She could also change a tire, patch an inner tube, and deal with an overheated engine. Her “feminine frailty” didn’t enter into it. What was needed was learning, and she had that because she had to.

  7. Me too, roses. I’ve only ever driven standards without power steering (and I don’t let dudes drive my car). I’ve never felt taxed by the physical demand. Now, lugging around a heaping laundry basket filled with wet men’s clothing? Different story. 😉

  8. When we take my car I prefer to drive. Longer trips (over a couple hours) I let him because he’s such a pain to drive with when he’s in the passenger seat. I have mastered the zen of passengering.

    What’s funny is when people ask me if I’m can to drive our corvette. Are you kidding me? Whether you mean can I handle a manual transmission or if I’m “allowed” – try to stop me.

  9. Personally, I tend to despise driving and get out of it whenever I can. This is directly related not to the fact that I am physically weaker than my husband (car has power *everything*, anyway), not to the fact that I multi-task too much (I don’t even answer my phone while driving), and not to the fact that he is socially programmed to drive.** It is directly related to the fact that there are a LOT of shitty, shitty, aggressive, stupid drivers on the road these days, and I find it very mentally taxing to drive, especially on the freeways. I do it; I very often *have* to. But I do pass that task off when possible, particularly if I am already tired and stressed. Fortunately I work from home, so I don’t have the need to commute daily. 🙂 And when we go on long car trips (several hundred miles) I actually prefer to drive — highway/interstate driving seems to be less stressful for me and since I am prone to motion sickness, I’d prefer to be driving than doing nothing for hours.

    As far as physical factors go, it would be good to remember that back when grandma (or great-grandma, for some of you) was learning to drive, cars were much, much heavier. Like, made of STEEL, not a lot of plastic and fiberglass. Yes, manual steering and manual braking was a *bitch* — my dad, who worked in construction his whole life and was in pretty darn good shape, had to work hard to brake his 3/4 ton manual truck. So I don’t think the writer was disparaging women’s physicality so much as recognizing that back in the day, driving could be a real chore. And city women especially may not have had the upper body strength since they didn’t do the same types of work as rural women. That said, I’m pretty sure it’s not a real factor today.

    **Another factor for me is that I learned to drive/got my license REALLY late. So for us it is somewhat habit.

  10. Funnily, for both my feminist husband and myself being the passenger is a sought after function. When you reduce driving down to what it basically is – work – it no longer becomes an expression of freedom and manliness, but a chore to be distributed evenly.

    I think in order to understand the link between driving and manliness we need to deconstruct cultural linkages of cars and driving to freedom, and manliness. There is a huge link between the idea of having a car and being free to explore for both men and women.

    For us, our car is not about freedom, rather represent a large economic cost that we bear in order to get around easily because there are no good public transportation alternatives (though, thankfully, I can take the train to work). Because of this driving is not about freedom (and my husband’s conception of manliness does not conform to cultural expectations), driving becomes a chore.

    I think as more people take on this attitude (cars are not freedom, driving is work) we’ll see more of an equality between driving duties (my parents view the car similarly and even though they are conservatives, they split driving). And we will have to consider – why is it that when something is not work but a privilege, the gender distribution of a task is skewed, but when it becomes work, things get shared.

    sorry if this wasn’t explained well.

  11. According to insurance stats, women are better drivers. However, I’m willing to bet that men are lousy passengers. My solution to backseat (or frontseat) drivers is to stop the car and offer the person the option to a) take the bus or b) hitch a ride. Of course, this also destroys whatever relationship you have with that person 🙂

  12. Gee, maybe because men tend towards a societally-inflicted aversion to be less “in control of things” than women?

    With cars, there’s a sort of assumption that the driver is the “alpha,” so to speak. Cue loads of guys thinking it’s emasculating to ride in the passenger seat with a woman driving. (And even more so to consider her the better driver—and given the statistical unlikelihood of two people having identical driving skills, she needs to be the worse driver.)

    Bonus points if it’s a sports car or something else fun, because then you add selfishness along the lines of “it’s an awesome car, why should I give up the fun of driving it?” as if they’re the only person around whose experience matters.

    Don’t even get me started on who generally rides on the back seat of a motorcycle.

  13. MWG, I’ve seen men read newspapers when they drive. I’ve seen them not bother to look to the side, let alone in their blind spot, when switching lanes. In my anecdotal experience, only one of my male friends (as opposed to most of my female friends) has ever passed off the phone for someone else to answer it. I had one ex who would fish around in his pocket for his phone, causing him to swerve in traffic, rather than wait the whopping 5 minutes to get to our destination.
    Yes, some women are shitty drivers. So are some men. I don’t need a man to be “okay” with me driving. He refuses to let me drive (ever, not just can’t drive his car), I don’t go places with him. That simple.

  14. The freakonomics blog yet again causes tons of discussion.

    My guy dislikes driving more than I do. I prefer to drive on long trips because I think I’m a better driver as well 🙂

  15. My husband concedes that my driving judgment is excellent, but he has marginally better skills.

    Let me put it this way…I’m not the one responsible for our recent increases in car insurance costs.

    Who drives when we are together? If we take my car, I drive. If we take his, he drives. Long trips? Shared duties.

    Not rocket science.

  16. Hate driving. Hate. (Hate so much I’m living a carfree lifestyle.)

    I am a great passenger though. I can even get a whole car laughing thru my fantastic reading of the sports pages, I do crossword puzzles well, I pontificate about the latest WIMP stories, I do communications management (that would be calling and saying “we are on the way arrival in x hours, make sure the wine is chilled), I am great with maps and directions and my iPhone has good (knock on wood) luck with connectivity so I’m nearly always able to pull up a map. Plus if you drive me somewhere I usually buy coffee/not coffee/whatever for you.

    Even when I owned a car if someone else was with they’d drive at my request.

  17. To be fair, I read “the Freakonomics guy” and thought you meant Steven Levitt. This is just “some guy on the Freakonomics blog”. Different people, same brand of “brain-dead chauvinism”.

  18. “My grandmother learned to drive only after the introduction of automatic transmission and power steering, which made the task much less physically demanding.”

    Really? Because I’m only 22, and my grandmother has been driving since before I was born. Her driving instructor was my mother. So much for women drivers, huh? What a moron.

    Also, my mother insists on driving her partner around everywhere, and he’s totally happy with that because it means he can have a couple of beers. I think she’s just a control freak and a terrible backseat driver, but hey, any anecdote I can find that proves the ‘derp women drivers lol’ crowd wrong counts.

    As for myself, I never passed my driving test, and if you saw me drive you would know why. No co-ordination at all.

  19. The difference between male and female drivers’ wrecks/mile depends on whether you’re talking about fatal or non-fatal accidents (see bottom of page iii):

    http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/1007/2/83596.0001.001.pdf

    I suspect the higher rate of fatalities among male drivers has to do with their well-documented propensity to take more/higher risks, like driving drunk. Female drivers have higher rates of non-fatal accidents in all age groups >25 years.

  20. When I first met the EX-hub, his car was broke-down and he was even broker (great choice, self) and he quickly took over driving of MY car in busy Okinawa. He was judgmental of my cautious driving, and like many men he liked to tell me that my “timid” driving was way way way more dangerous than his breakneck, no signals, angry, cussing, swerving, aggressive style. I was new to driving (6 months, learned in Japan right before I met him) and hated it when people watched me drive and critiqued it. So I let him nearly kill me on a daily basis. For 5 years. We soon got two running cars, but any time we were together on the road in either car, he insisted on driving. And I was a castrating bitch for trying to tame his angry habits.

    I went without a car for over a year until just last month, so I’ve gotten a lot of passenger-time with my friends and mumblekindanewboyfriendguy and I’m ready to be the driver. Of course, first ride with the new guy, and he’s laughing at how I drive like “a typical short girl” with hands at 10/2 and good posture. Grrrrrr. But now I know (and know how) to speak up for myself, and maybe he’s young enough to learn.

  21. I have pretty severe ADHD and as such, I a: am not a very good driver and b: find driving very stressful. I am glad to hand off the driving to mr. purl (and since we usually bike/take public transit these days, there’s not much driving to be done). The only time in our marriage when I did most of the driving was when I was the “magic 25” and my husband was 24 – I got much better insurance rates, and better terms when renting cars.

  22. I live in a one-car household and that car belongs to my boyfriend so when we go out he usually drives because he owns the car. I borrow the car on occasion to run errands or whatever, but I prefer to walk or ride my bike (if I’m able to) when I go somewhere. We moved three states away from our hometown, so on trips back to visit family we take turns driving. I also drove us home on NYE when my boyfriend was too drunk to drive. What does anyone want to make about that and really, who cares?

  23. So to add another bit of perspective: automatic transmission is extremely rare in Europe, and yet somehow women manage to drive cars.
    Not me, because I’m a city kid and we actualy have decent public transport, but from the few lessons I took, I don’t remember shifting gears to be any kind of demanding.

  24. I really enjoy that the comments thread highlights how largely this comes down to personal preference. Some women prefer to drive, some don’t. Some men prefer to drive, some don’t. Personally, I live in Chicago and I hate driving in the city. I regard it as a favor when my boyfriend drives, although we do take turns when we go somewhere in a car. That said, I’ve had a male friend try to get in the driver’s seat of my car when I offered him a ride home who actually said, “I just don’t feel right letting you drive.” Umm, it’s my car. I told him he could get in the passenger seat or walk.

    1. I really enjoy that the comments thread highlights how largely this comes down to personal preference. Some women prefer to drive, some don’t. Some men prefer to drive, some don’t.

      Except I really don’t think that’s the whole story. It’s not as simple as “some women just don’t like to drive” — there is something a little bit more systematic going on here. Yes, it may be “personal preference,” but why do so many more men prefer to drive than women? The point of my post wasn’t “Hey look we like different things! Neat!” It was “there is another dynamic going on here.”

  25. control freak that I am- I always have done most of the driving in my relationships, including friendships with women. I never thought of it as a (potentially) sexed activity and certainly see in it my own need for control. In my current relationship I drive when it’s my car & he drives when it’s his. Although we rarely drive his because (a) he’s a slob and (b) he has ADD and it makes me crazier than I already am to let him drive. Be interesting to see if there are any real studies of the subject out there.

  26. My great-grandmother drove her whole life. She was born in 1897. When she was 93, they took away her license because she was getting uncoordinated in her old age; she drove it anyway. When my grandfather (her son) took away her keys, she hotwired the car. They had to take the battery out to keep her from driving it. (FYI, she lived to be 101.)

    The comments on the article are just as bad… someone suggested that “perhaps men enjoy exploring more stimulating spacial relationships…” what is this, Make Up Bullshit Pseudoscience Day?

  27. Sadly, I’m also guilty of just hating to drive. My ex used to always drive even though a) it was my car, b) he never knew where we were going but would have a hissy fit when I gave him directions, and c) made me car sick because he drove so aggressively (my dog once threw up in the back seat because of this). I’m a very tense driver, especially when there is a lot of traffic, so I would prefer to have ANYONE else drive when I’m in the car even though I hate to perpetuate the sexist trend that men should drive around their women. As for women multitasking or being too weak for a manual transmission…please…*rolls eyes*

  28. I blame Nancy Drew.

    No, really! See, when the original Nancy Drew stuff was released, Nancy drove herself a lot. And then, when there was a re-release, she got driven around more, including letting a strange man drive her car to drive her home.

    *firmnod* It’s all very scientific.

    /flippancy

  29. What UnFit said: Cars with automatic transmission are a rarity in Europe (well, at least these parts). I have been a driver for more than fifteen years, and I have never driven one.

    What I don’t understand is that how come men are at the same time said to be “better drivers because they are more rational and even-tempered than women” AND “men are hardwired to be competitive, aggressive and seek sex and power at all costs, because of their HOLY TESTOSTERONE”.

  30. Every car I’ve owned has been a stick shift, and I wouldn’t drive anything else. I am a damn good driver, if I do say so myself. This so-called study is just some more sexist junk-science BS.

    And “animal instinct?” Uh dude—for real?

  31. I admit it. I am a feminist and yet my husband almost always drives and almost always controls the remote.

    Yes, that is my “preference” but, as Jill points out, there is more to it than that. For me, I think it comes down to the deep socialization I have to always accommodate everyone else’s needs and desires. My husband in turn is deeply socialized to interpret my desire to accommodate as an invitation for him to take charge. So it winds up just being more comfortable if he just drives or controls the remote.

    To get more specific: If I am driving the car, I worry that he may be uncomfortable because of the way I am driving, the route I have decided to take, or the spot where I have chosen to park. I enjoy driving when I am by myself, but the worry and self-consciousness I feel with my husband makes driving with him not enjoyable.

    This is similar to the remote control issue. I love channel surfing alone, but when I am with my husband I would rather he have the remote. I don’t want to worry that I am choosing a program he hates, not flipping channels fast enough, etc. It is simply more comfortable to have him do what he wants to do. My preference is a function of my deeply internalized belief that my first responsibility is to accommodate others — a belief that I think that tends to be very gendered.

    This need to feel like accommodating others works out well when I am with other women, but not so much with men, including my husband. For example, if I am watching television with a female friend, I will stop on a show and say, “Oh, this looks interesting. Do you want to watch this or keep looking for a show?” Or if I am driving, I will say to my female friends, “Hey, I think I’ll take the highway unless you would rather go the scenic route.” Then my friends can weigh in and I can enjoy driving or controlling the remote because I feel everyone has been consulted and is thus satisfied with what I am doing.

    Men, in my experience, just don’t get this. If I consult my husband as I am channel surfing, he takes that as an invitation to to just take charge of the remote (“Why don’t you just give me the remote and I’ll find something”) or, if I consult on what route to take, he will say, “Well, why don’t I just drive.” He mistakenly interprets my need to build a consensus with an invitation for him to take charge.

    This doesn’t mean my husband is a jerk. He isn’t. But we are both products of gendered socialization that place him in the driver’s seat even though we are both good drivers who enjoy driving. Yes, this is my “preference” but that doesn’t mean sexist cultural norms haven’t played into and it doesn’t mean that the choice isn’t problematic. (The phrase “being in the driver’s seat” means “being in charge” after all.)

  33. Right now, I don’t drive much. This is due to an intersection of factors.
    1) Driving for me is a skill and work to do, not a pleasure. I do not let my license lapse, I get behind the wheel occasionally to remember how to do it, but I drive because I need to, not because I want to.
    2) My husband has driven professionally since the age of eighteen, whether in a taxicab, a semi truck, or a tow truck. He likes to drive. He is also, due to practice, better at it than most people.
    3) There have been three occasions in his life in which he was in a car, offered to drive, was turned down, and the driver got in a wreck. He once spent eight hours entrapped due to one of these. So he has a little bit of PTSD about being driven by someone else.
    4) I have something going wrong with my inner ear that gives me sudden horrible bouts of vertigo.

    So given that I don’t like to drive, have the intermittent vertigo problem, he likes to drive, is better at it than I am, and experiences some degree of anxiety if he isn’t the driver, it’s our practice to let him drive.

  34. Bucket seats versus bench seats in the front made a big difference in my family.

    My mother is petite, my father tall. In the older cars we had bench seats, in the front, and if my mother was driving by the time the seat was pulled up enough for her to be comfortable driving, it was too close for my father to be comfortable in the passenger seat. So if both were in the car, my father drove, because it was the only way for both to be comfortable.

    Once we switched to cars with bucket seats in front, the driving was split much more evenly.

  35. Another Laurie FTW.

    Seriously, can I point people to your comment when they take Great Umbrage and the Horrible Injustice (STALIN! STALIN! STALIN!!!1!) of pointing out that their perfectly innocent preference really may have larger, unseen dynamics behind it? And that exploring these dynamics isn’t an indictment of their feminism or their personhood?

  36. I think that on some level, it’s probably a result of social conditioning about “proper” gender roles. You know, that men are supposed to be confident, aggressive and take charge; women are supposed to be meek and passive.

    In my own case, my boyfriend always drives when we go somewhere. That’s probably because when we first started dating, I still didn’t have my license, so he HAD to drive everywhere. Plus, I hate to drive, and he loves it. I find it mentally exhausting; he finds it relaxing. So he just does the driving, and both of us are happy. For us, it’s just personal preference and nothing more, but that might not be the case for every relationship.

  37. I am a woman and I thoroughly dislike driving. I don’t think my preference for having my husband drive is a matter of being socialized as a female, and I am quick to blame a lot of preferences on gendered socialization. I find driving stressful, not unreasonably, as car accidents are a leading cause of death among young people. I personally can’t really imagine why anyone would prefer to drive when you could be a relaxed, sleeping or reading passenger instead.

    Of course I would rather drive myself if I believe the other person is reckless, drunk, or otherwise unable to drive at least as well as I am. And I did insist that my Southern husband let me drive through a snowstorm because I knew I’d be better able to keep the car on the road, me being from the Northeast. He is a perfect, rational man and happily agreed. But if given an option to let someone equally capable of driving do the driving, I’ll take it and have a nap.

  38. Haha, I had a friend a long time ago who had a theory about this, and it definitely has to do with socialization about how men and women are taught to communicate. My friend thought that the ideal position is man driving, woman in passenger seat, because that way the woman can look at the man while they have a conversation, and the man can just look straight forward. So he can certainly talk, but not have to make a more emotionally in-tuned display (by looking at the other person), the excuse being having to keep ones eyes on the road. So that’s possibly one dynamic 😉

  39. For couples with children there’s also the parenting-burden factor. I honestly thought MGW was going there with her post until I read it all the way through. Women are supposed to be the one to care for the kids– we carry the purses with extra care taking items, we have the diaper bag, we are supposed to be better at soothing the crying baby and are more likely to pay attention to and break up the sibling squabbles. In most couples I know who have kids the reason the guy drives the most is because he’d rather focus on the road than parent the children while in the car.

  41. @Laurie in Mpls.:

    Sure, old cars were heavy. But that’s not what he cited as allowing “grandma” to learn to drive: he cited “automatic transmissions” and “power steering”.

    Most people outside the U.S. still drive manuals. Power steering didn’t become standard until relatively recently. Neither of these factors makes driving easier for women (as, possibly, lighter cars might, although I seriously doubt that this is anywhere near as important as social factors).

    Anyway, I spent something like 4-5 years doing all the driving because my boyfriend had a suspended license. Now that he has it back, I’m happy to let him drive because I hate driving (except road trips) and I got really sick of it during those 4-5 years (especially when I had a 2-hour round-trip commute every day). But even though he likes driving more than I do, he doesn’t like it when he’s tired, or when he wants to work on something or eat breakfast or whatever. Because driving is a–sometimes enjoyable–chore. So we end up splitting about evenly when we’re going somewhere together, but I drive much more because it’s my car.

    I think the issue is less that women are less likely to “enjoy” driving (I’m not sure that’s really the case, and even if it is, I’m not sure men love *driving itself* as much as they say they do–rather than the “being in charge” driving supposedly conveys) as that women who DO enjoy driving are more likely to let the man drive all the time, either in a quiet making-him-happy way or because he’s overtly controlling and won’t “let” her. That’s what disturbs me about the whole thing.

  42. What I thought.

    That study was dated 1993, based on 1990 data. So the 50-year-old women in it came of age in the 1960’s.

    Secondly, look at the percentage of miles driven by gender. Women, overall, had 60% of the miles driven that men did. Up through age 24, women were up around 80% of men’s mileage, but for the 25-29 cohort — exactly where women’s driving performance started to fall behind men’s in terms of non-fatal accidents — women drop to 57% of men’s mileage, and pretty much stay there.

    The rates of accidents by gender are done by million miles driven, which means that men’s greater amount of exposure to the risk of car accidents (being that they drive more) is accounted for already. But the rates are *not* normalized to driving *experience* — ie, the more time you spend behind the wheel the better you get at driving.

    So women get 60% of the driving experience men do, and perform 25% worse in terms of fender benders. If women and men were exactly equal in native skill level, we would expect that women would perform 40% worse than men because they get 40% less driving experience. Instead, they get 25% worse.

    Women are *better* drivers than men. The insurance companies have it right. It’s probably sociological rather than biological — too-timid driving will produce fewer accidents than too-aggressive driving — but any nonsense about “women have weaker spatial perception than men” is just that, arrant nonsense. The fact that they didn’t control for greater driving experience on the men’s part, and report that people who drive 40% more than other people have 25% fewer fender benders as if this makes them *naturally better* at driving, shows the unconscious bias at work.

    As for why men take the wheel more often than women, it’s all about control. Men are socialized to demand control; women are socialized to offer to share it. I am actually grateful in many ways that my husband can’t drive; for his sake I wish he could have greater independence, but it’s probably good for our marriage that I get to/have to do all the driving, because I identified driving as a source of control other people could have over my life and rejected that control from them pretty early on. *I* drive the car. I do not let men drive the car. Ever. (The one time in recent memory I did, on a 12-hour drive while I was pregnant and we were in a rental van with two guys, my husband and me, I made the mistake of letting one of the guys take over so I could sleep, he got completely lost and I woke up to find we were so badly lost we had to circle around a mountain in the middle of the night to get to our destination. On the trip home, I did all the driving.)

  43. My husband usually drives around the city, and we split highway driving. I’m sure he’d like me to drive in town more, because like others said, it’s work, but I grew up being told by my stepfather that women were pretty much not good at anything, and the *slightest* misjudgment meant you were a complete and utter failure (perfectionist issues? I haz them!). Something as harmless as missing a turn and having to circle back was proof positive that no woman, anywhere, at any time, was any good at driving. And men of course, either didn’t make such mistakes, or if they did, it was a *legitimate* mistake – no human could be expected to have done it better! My heart rate shoots through the roof and I get the shakes (which doesn’t make for better driving) whenever a man gets in my passenger seat, because I am waiting for the hail of derision. Though it rarely comes, I have noticed that when it does, it’s without fail from That Guy who drives like he has a death wish and/or has written off several vehicles. I’m actually an excellent driver, but I *hate* my personal foibles being held up as Evidence Against Womenkind Being Good At Anything, so unless I think I can navigate my way perfectly at all times (and who can, seriously??), I usually avoid the stress of feeling like I have to validate my entire gender.

    Of course, my husband has no douchebag issues… at least, not that he says… but I find it really hard to break through my anxiety and take the wheel unless he specifically asks me to, because I’m terrified of making a mistake and ohnoesthenhe’llrealizewomenarebaddrivers! Sigh. It’s a Resolution of mine to get over that.

  44. It’s about power and control, which is culturally linked to patriarchal norms.

    When my family goes somewhere together, I drive and we take my car. Road trip? I drive. Grocery store? I drive. Snow? Rain? Wind? You’re damn straight I’d better be driving. When we went to another country, an island with the scariest roller coaster roads I’ve ever driven, I refused to even let my husband behind the wheel.

    Why? I love driving, and I’m a fucking CONTROL FREAK about how I drive, how other people drive, what’s on the stereo, which route we take, how fast/slow we go, and whether we make any stops. This makes me a statistical anomaly because I’m a woman, but I’m willing to bet most readers will read the decription of myself and probably recognize their asshole driver fathers.*

    One thing I wonder whether our Freakonomics blogger considered: While regaling stories of his dear ol’ Gran, did he ever factor in whether she lived in a two-car family, or whether her work and errands were ever considered important enough to warrant her own car or lessons?

    Another thing: I know a lot of middle-aged ladies that never learned to drive because they were from large metro areas with good transportation systems, despite having moved to this more rural area later in life. They are so dependent on their husbands and kids to get around and do basic things, like getting to and from work or running household errands, that they are basically immobile if there isn’t a car and driver readily available to them.

    We should totally commission the start of a Ladies’ Driving School.

    One final thing: I read something a zillion years ago about why road rage was such an average event, and many psychologists and sociologists believe it has to do with our belief that when we are behind the wheel the car serves as an extension of our person. Our notions of privacy, personal space, and power change as we get behind the wheel — for example, one’s personal bubble extends to the perimeter of one’s car, which is why you are so pissed off when someone is riding your ass, not only because it’s dangrous but because you also find it offensive. Taking into account patriarchal cultural norms, I’d imagine more men drive because of the power, control, and the belief that they are somehow more safe or protective of what is inside the car thanks to cultural narratives about man as protector.

    * Mine used to make us take eight hour road trips without a bathroom break. Now, that’s me. Thanks, dad.

  45. When we take my car I prefer to drive. Longer trips (over a couple hours) I let him because he’s such a pain to drive with when he’s in the passenger seat. I have mastered the zen of passengering.

    This. I enjoy driving, and especially I like to drive at least part of the time on roadtrips (mostly because I’d rather drive than deal with the kids, but also because I enjoy driving), but when the husband and I are in the car together, and especially on long trips, he almost always drives. He’s generally a great guy and we have a mostly egalitarian relationship, but not so much in the car. And this is mainly because I don’t like to argue and it’s just easier to let him. And because when he drives, I know how to keep my mouth shut when his driving irritates me, but he’s prone to lecture and can’t just shut his fucking mouth and sit in the damn seat and let me drive. He always, always has to make some comment or other on the route I chose, how fast I’m driving, how slow I’m driving, or something. I find that, in the interest of a harmonious home and the fact that I love him everywhere except the car, it’s just easier to let him drive. Even though he doesn’t especially enjoy driving and long trips put him in a horribly pissy mood.

    But driving around town, we split the driving responsibilities. Not quite evenly, but more so than not.

    Also, pretty much exactly what Another Laurie said upthread.

  46. My dad was a truck driver for 25 years, and yet, when he and my mom go anywhere, she always drives. I think this is for several reasons. (1) My dad’s vehicle is a Ford pickup which my mom refuses to ride in because it is usually covered in mud and dirt. (2) Because they usually take my mom’s vehicle, she’s more familiar with it. (3) My dad hates driving my mom’s car because, like I said, he used to drive a semi and now drives a Ford F150, and he feels like he’s riding in a little toy vehicle when he’s behind the wheel of my mom’s car. And (4), my mom has made it clear that if he were to drive and he ever damaged her car and left her without a vehicle, she’d wring his neck.

    My mom, BTW, would never consider herself a feminist. She thinks is perfectly ordinary to have worked for BellSouth for 30 years, and to have spent most of that time climbing telephone poles just like the guys. In Mississippi, no less. Needless to say, I think my experience growing up was an exception to the rule.

  47. I am definitely guilty of this. I am better at staying awake than my husband is, so I typically take over if it is late at night (I did the 11pm-4am trip to Long Island, but he drove the LIE the next day during rush hour). I will drive if he is tired or has a headache, but other than that he drives and I ride in the passenger seat and I know it’s flat out social conditioning because I enjoy driving (as does he) and think we are pretty much equal in driving ability. Right now I enjoy driving a little less because I was recently in a car accident (and then the ambulance they put me in to check me out got hit by a car making it two accidents in the space of 45 minutes) so I am a little skittish, but that’s only been the last couple of weeks not our entire relationship.

  48. What a freakonomic idiot. It’s not all that hard to drive a car with no power steering and a standard transmission. For cripes sake, I’ve been driving one for 32 years. And me just a li’l ol’ decrepit woman.

  49. I’m sure it’s for the same reason prostitution is so gendered, in their eyes. It’s because men only like to fuck and women only like money. This has something to do with driving.

  50. but I’m willing to bet most readers will read the decription of myself and probably recognize their asshole driver fathers.*

    OMG!!! You too, Lauren?! I thought I was the only one in the world whose father expected everyone else to have a bladder the size of the planet Jupiter. I was even told once to “stick my ass out the window” (I didn’t do it). Oh yeah. Good times!

    Now, he has a prostate the size of the planet Jupiter, and can’t go much over an hour without a bathroom break. He better hope he’s never in the position of having to travel anywhere with me!!

  51. I’ve had cars with manual transmissions and no power steering. I was fine.

    I partially learned to drive on a pick-up truck so big that I had to loosen the seat belt to shift into 5th gear. I was still able to do it. This is a bullshit excuse.

    I will say that one reason women in the past—at least those from the middle classes who didn’t have to perform physical labor—may have been physically weaker, because if you don’t use it you lose it. They cultivated weak bodies, and that’s why there are so many fragile elderly ladies. But the idea that being female makes you automatically too fragile to do something simple like drive a car, even a pre-power-steering car, is as much a classist assumption as a sexist one, since it presupposes that women who do blue collar work are not women. That’s the whole point of the famous “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech.

  52. Physical “weakness”—again, a combination of social factors and prejudice on the average level, particularly with mundane tasks—doesn’t explain why I had a friend whose mother didn’t know how to pump gas because her husband always did it, and once found herself stranded and having to get help. To pump gas. Is the gas guzzle too heavy now? It weighs less than a baby.

    Seriously. Strength differences between men and women only come up in household chores with non-elderly people when furniture needs to be moved. Having lived in a household full of women, I can assure you that it’s survivable, even if your mother is a chair collector who is always, always rearranging furniture. I’m sure Levitt couldn’t imagine we survived with our weak ass arms that can barely lift a gallon of milk and yet.

    I don’t doubt that some women probably did struggle with power steering, but probably only because they had muscular atrophy from severe underuse.

  53. I do all of the driving in my family. My husband has never had a driver’s license and has no desire to get one. We live in a small city with decent public transportation, so he can get to work and around town on his own, but I do 100% of the driving work when we visit our families, go to the grocery store, go on vacation, etc. We have moved from New England to California and back again and I drove the whole way.

    I have learned to expect jokes and incredulous stares when people learn of our driving arrangement. The comments inevitably belittle my husband’s masculinity or portray me as a controlling harpy. In a jokey way! Not really, though.

    My father-in-law was also a late driver. When he married my mother-in-law, he had no license and she did all their driving. He was usually quite happy to let her do the work, but he could not stomach the idea that everyone at their wedding reception would watch him get into the passenger’s seat when they drove off for their honeymoon. Instead, he he got into the driver’s seat and drove around the corner and out of sight (the first time he had ever driven anywhere). Then, they switched places and my mother-in-law took over her normal duties.

  54. It is to my shame that I must confess that sometimes I get twitchy when my wife is driving us somewhere. Usually this is when conditions are poor, or I’m concentrating on how she is driving and being critical in the silence of my own head. I don’t know if this is because of privilege or sexism or just a barely-controllable impulse towards being a control freak. I think my perceptions of where the car is heading are different in the passenger seat than in the driver’s seat because it’s usually at curves that I experience it the worst. I try to sit on the impulse however because it can’t do anything but make my beloved worried that she’s driving poorly.

  55. I’ve always found it entertaining that the only times I’ve been even near to getting in an accident was sliding into the median during a snowstorm.  (Which was one part mild underexperience, and fifteen parts omg snow and night and snow.)  Meanwhile, my ex, who swore that he could drive while tired, while tipsy, while fumbling for his phone, was in at least two car accidents that I know of.

    I love driving, but I get very tense during it.  I am that person who is two steps away from a mandatory Road Rage driving session — I’m mostly fine, I use my signals and all that, but someone cuts me off and suddenly I am all red-eyed and grar.  So, I don’t drive.  Blessedly, I live in Portland OR, where the local bus system is pretty useful.

  56. Goddamit. This thread just makes me sad I’m broke. I love driving. Preferably a luxury sedan that I do not own. In oversize sunglasses. Blaring something ridiculous. No man has gotten between me and the wheel, unless alcohol and being a law abiding citizen was involved.

    And I guess for me, it is an issue of control. It’s also an issue of beauty. There’s something about those smooth turns. It’s undeniable.

    Of course, having an unexpired license and money does help. Bah.

  57. Did anyone say that it also “looks bad” and un-manly for the man to be in the passenger’s seat? Those windows are see-through, you know. What kind of guy isn’t “in the driver’s seat”? How shameful!

    When my husband backed out of the garage and knocked the side-view mirror off the car, he took it in to get fixed and told them his wife did it. He said when they looked at him and asked how it happened, he felt like he couldn’t admit it without looking bad. I remind him of that when he cringes while I drive.

  58. Yes, Jill, there is another dynamic going on. My six year old niece could not be convinced to put Barbie in the driver’s seat and Ken in the passenger’s seat of Barbie’s pink car. She just could NOT GET that a woman would drive when a man was in the car. Sad.

  59. Currently, I don’t have a car and my bf does, so he gets lots more practice and is generally better at driving right now (my town has awesome public transport, his doesn’t). On trips we pretty much split driving, but the passenger is in charge of following the map and not getting us lost. I don’t really like driving, especially when I don’t get much practice at it, but I think the current arraignment we have works fine.

  60. I love channel surfing alone, but when I am with my husband I would rather he have the remote. I don’t want to worry that I am choosing a program he hates, not flipping channels fast enough, etc.

    And everything else you said to, I am right there with you. Flipping through the Netflix Instant Queue is so much fun alone… with him, I just let him do it, for these exact reasons.

  61. “In addition, our roads are engineered to be quite forgiving, for example with very long reaction times permitted by the system.”

    Really? Has he driven in a snowstorm or a big city? On long trips I sometimes prefer not to drive too much because I don’t usually get carsick reading so I’d rather do that. At the same time on not busy highways is where I think driving is most relaxing. I loved driving when I was a teenager because I lived in the country where there was a bus every hour and driving meant freedom. Now that I’m out of practice from taking the bus or subway everywhere driving makes me a little nervous, especially when it’s snowing.

  62. I know that there are cultural stereotypes revolving around driving, but I don’t care. I don’t drive often because, while I enjoy it for the most part (I may have a bit of road rage), I get sleepy relatively easily, especially on long drives without other cars (i.e. the time when I’m least likely to be annoyed by other drivers). My husband is much better on both these counts, therefore he drives.

  63. I partially learned to drive on a pick-up truck so big that I had to loosen the seat belt to shift into 5th gear. I was still able to do it.

    Which is, of course, another issue. There is the sexism of car designers who assume men will be doing the driving.

    A well-designed car or truck shouldn’t require loosening the seatbelt in order to change gears. But if the designers start by designing for the “average man” rather than “average person”, and then consider modifications needed for people larger than that average, but not smaller than average, you’re going to have a situation where it will often be physically more convenient and comfortable for men to drive rather than women.

    Yes a woman can drive a car that requires loosening the seat belt to change gears. But having to fuss with the seat belt, and perhaps loosen it more than is safe, is far from ideal, and having to constantly deal with an inhospitable design is going to make some women less comfortable driving.

    Same problem as my family had with bench seats, which are comfortable when the driver is larger than the passenger, but difficult when the passenger is larger than the driver. If they thought about size issues at all, they assumed that man (larger) would be driving, and a woman would still be comfortable with the seat pulled back and having the extra leg room. They didn’t consider the opposite situation in the design, and how a 6″ man would feel sitting on a bench seat pulled forward so a 5″ woman can drive.

  64. I have learned to expect jokes and incredulous stares when people learn of our driving arrangement. The comments inevitably belittle my husband’s masculinity or portray me as a controlling harpy. In a jokey way! Not really, though.

    I have a special hatred for this. Thing is, the belittling his masculinity insults the woman too—the only way it CAN be an insult to his masculinity if she drives is if she is his inferior, unfit to be above him or in more control than he is.

    I’ve long rehearsed rants for the event that somebody belittles a male companion for riding behind me on a motorcycle. Who are these random strangers to tell you or me or any woman that we belong behind our men, or in the passenger seat with them driving? And who are they to tell our male friends and lovers and family members that respecting us as people makes them pathetic?

  65. I tend to drive for a number of reasons. First my wife is a super-duper aggressive driver: and she is calmer in the passenger seat with my passive So.Cal. suburban-boy driving than I am with her ultra-aggressive, raised in NYC driving. Second I drive on the Sabbath and she generally doesn’t: so if we want to spend Saturday afternoon visiting her sick father (and then recovering from visiting the old curmudgeon with a visit to her godmother nearby), I’m the go-to guy for driving. Third, I use the car for commuting and its just easier for us to keep the seat/mirrors in position for me to drive.

    If I could manage to remain calm when my wife drove, if neither or both of us drove on the Sabbath or if we had one of those fancy cars that allowed us to automatically change mirror positions to pre-set values at the touch of a button, I would hardly ever drive outside of my commute to work as I actually rather dislike driving while my wife doesn’t mind driving at all.

  66. I find tht whenever there is a group of people discussing where to go, and who will be driving to pick up whom (ie. carpooling), more often times than not, the one whom the group has chosen as the designated driver for the night is usually a man.

    Also, I hesitate to say that being a slower, safer driver automatically makes one a better driver than someone who speeds and does riskier manouevers, which always seems to be the case in posts like this. I don’t equate safer with better. If indeed safer meant better, than a 90 year old Grandma would be a better driver than Mikka Hakkinen, Schumacher, etc.

    When people say “better driver”, I think of people who can control their cars way beyond what normal people can do (ie. much like an experienced horse rider can do things with his/her horse that others simply can’t do). Obviously, in this respect, better drivers for me usually mean people who engage in professional racing, ie. F1 racing, professional drifters, go Karts, etc.

    To see the social conditioning going on with why men seem to drive more often than women, even when in the same car, look no further than F1. Where are all the women drivers? Probably because women have been conditioned to think that they can’t be “as one” with a car, as men.

  67. So women get 60% of the driving experience men do, and perform 25% worse in terms of fender benders. If women and men were exactly equal in native skill level, we would expect that women would perform 40% worse than men because they get 40% less driving experience. Instead, they get 25% worse.

    I don’t mean to derail, but this reasoning is flawed. It rests on the assumption that 1% more miles driven makes you 1% more likely to get into an accident.

    To see the flaw, just imagine women don’t every drive at all, and thus, drove 0% the miles men do. Following the rationale, women should have 200% as many accidents as men per mile. Makes no sense at all.

    I would expect that skill at avoiding accidents would follow an s-curve with respect to miles driven, and I expect men and women* beyond a fairly young age to be so far up the curve that it doesn’t matter in general, although it could still be relevant for special cases like, say, driving in a snowstorm, an if you get that just right then the expected skill difference is actually more than the difference in experience.

    I expect the lesser driving experience is relevant to the non-fatal accidents but you cannot extract an expected difference in accidents from the amount of miles driven.

    I will say that one reason women in the past—at least those from the middle classes who didn’t have to perform physical labor—may have been physically weaker, because if you don’t use it you lose it.

    This would surprise me. Is there any reason to believe that middle-class women from the past didn’t use muscles as much as middle-class women today? Honestly, I’d have guessed the opposite, for both men and women.

    I have limited experience with old cars with no power steering. Best I have is my grandma confirming that she had difficulty doing it at the time with the heavier cars and no power steering. She could do it but she had difficulty and hated it in the snow because you had to jerk the wheel around rapidly. She grew up on a farm and so was certainly using her muscles. She has no problem with modern cars, despite being elderly now.

    *men and women in places where public transit isn’t good enough to get away with not driving.

  68. “in addition, our roads are engineered to be very forgiving, with very long reaction times permitted by the system” This guy believes women are not only weak, but slow. What a dolt.

  69. When I was younger and still far more passive to men, I’d ordinarily let them drive when we were both in the car together. I even let 2 men actually totally ruin 2 of my vehicles with their insane driving and lack of respect for my vehicle.

    I don’t do that anymore.

    Unless I’m in a large city that I’m unfamiliar with, and the man in the car with me is familiar with the terrain, I’m going to be the one driving -my- car. Unless, of course, I’m intoxicated or too sleepy or genuinely unable to drive for whatever reason. I no longer concede control automatically, and not for very good reason. I also do not have any problem controlling the remote and decided what we’re going to watch on TV. Although, I will usually ask for input.

    I also prefer to drive because I have limited trust in other people’s driving abilities. It’s difficult for me to relax and trust that they aren’t going to kill me. If anyone is going to kill me in an accident, I much prefer to be the one to do it. At least then I wouldn’t feel the need to blame someone else. (Yes, I know I’d be dead…work with me here. 🙂 )

    But, yea, I definitely believe that there is quite a significant amount of social programming going on when it comes to men expecting to be the drivers automatically, and women passively allowing them to take control (whether it be driving or deciding what’s on tv). My refusal to submit in such a regard anymore has a lot to do with why I’m currently single and have been for some time. It’s just soooo much easier to not deal with men’s entitlement to dominate in relationships.

    “When my husband backed out of the garage and knocked the side-view mirror off the car, he took it in to get fixed and told them his wife did it. He said when they looked at him and asked how it happened, he felt like he couldn’t admit it without looking bad. I remind him of that when he cringes while I drive.”

    That would have been grounds for divorce for me. Although, I wouldn’t have been married in the first place. It would have been grounds for kicking his sorry house out of the house and telling him to not come back.

  70. I was thinking some more about the issue of examining the larger social dynamics behind our preferences. It seems to me that this doesn’t necessarily do much good unless we use what we learn to make a change.

    In my case, there are two different strategies I could try to overcome my conditioning. (1) I can practice driving or handling the remote control like a man. That is, I can make a concerted effort to do what makes sense to me on the road or with the remote without worrying unduly about my husband. He is a grown man and he can speak up if he needs to — and I can then either accept or reject his requests as appropriate. (2) I can consult him — which makes me more comfortable — but if he says, “Why don’t I just take over?” I can use that as an opportunity to say, “You know, I don’t really want you to take over. I just want to make sure you are comfortable,” and then have a chat about the dynamics of our driving and TV-watching habits.

    There is also the larger question of whether this really matters. On one level, maybe it doesn’t. In my case, I have made a concerted and successful effort to be assertive at work, and in areas that truly affect my place in society. I haven’t put in that effort in the areas of driving and TV-watching because they don’t seem that important, so it’s easier to just revert to the familiar and the comfortable.

    On the other hand, these things do set a tone. Letting the men drive or control the remote is part of a larger dynamic by which men are also allowed to take control of meetings, assume leadership positions, control family finances, and lots of other things that matter a lot more than whether you watch one TV show versus another on Monday night. It creates an impression among children and adults that women really would rather have the men take charge of things, whether it is a small thing or a large one. That impression then justifies discrimination in many people’s minds and/or an internalized sense by women that it is appropriate to always settle for second place.

    Note, I am not saying that we all have a moral duty to grab the car keys away from the men in our lives or to insist on driving if we don’t enjoy it. Maybe that doesn’t make sense in your case. But I do think there is a larger significance to the some of the daily patterns we get into and I think it is something that can be changed.

  71. When we take my car on short trips I am the one driving. If we take my car on a longer trip, I let my husband drive because he is a terrible passenger and makes me crazy and then we fight. Also, if he’s driving, I get to knit.

  72. I don’t have an SO, so I can only talk about my parents.

    My dad “doesn’t like” my mom driving long distances, and he always drives the car if they go anywhere. But my mom is the sort of person who would rather chew off her own leg than stop being the princess, so if we go somewhere, I’m more likely to drive her than she is to drive me. One time she was driving in my car while my dad took his car somewhere a few hours away. She did nothing but whine and moan and selectively forget how to use the car until I rolled my eyes and we switched at the next rest stop.

    So I think some of the “I like being a passenger” stuff is a lot like the “his last name is just better than mine” thing.

    My dad has driven me in my own car (to be fair, my car is newer and better suited to long distances than his is) on long trips, but this is more due to my tendency to fall asleep suddenly during a long drive. I don’t hate driving, but I do get massively sleepy about an hour and a half in. And when your destination is nearly three hours away, that can be difficult. (And when you have to go there and back in one day, it can be very, very difficult.) I appreciate that he wants to do a favor for me, but it’s also no fun at all to have him at the wheel when we go, as he has no idea where stuff (I went to college there) is and wants to come and go very quickly (I want to stop and shop a bit).

    At least in my family, gender is not the big issue in driving. My brother had to be chauffeured EVERYWHERE and felt entitled to it (and my mother told me he was entitled to it and I had to drive him anywhere he needed to go) because he didn’t drive. My dad tends to drive most of us everywhere if we’re all going to the same place, although before I left I was driving myself because I get sick easily and would need to go home early. But it always struck me as “because he’s nice.” Then my mom would rather never ever drive anywhere she didn’t have to for herself. And that strikes me as “because she’s selfish.” Now, my mom’s selfishness is tied into her role as a woman (too long to explain), but it’s not because she’s a woman. My brother and my mom are peas in a pod. If he drove, he would refuse to drive people too.

    Oooh I don’t think this was very coherent. My stomach medicine makes me loopy. Apologies.

  73. What in the world could be responsible for the fact that when men and women ride in cars together, men are more likely to drive?

    Well, someone has to be able to safely look at a map if necessary to figure out where they are going, and when pulled over to the curb ask people on the sidewalk for directions. There’s a stereotype that not only are men more likely to want to be the driver, but less likely to look at maps when lost or be willing to ask for directions. Besides sexism or sexual stereotypes this might have something to do with how it is not being safe to look at maps while driving or how the driver’s seat is not adjacent to the curb as the passenger seat is, which is the case even in the UK and elsewhere where the steering wheel is on the right side of the front seat and cars drive on the left hand side of the road.

  75. Oh, yeah, I can easily think of a number of factors that contribute to this… Even as children, boys are much more strongly encouraged to be familiar with, show an interest in, and mess around with cars. But I’m sure that being taught, almost from birth, that cars are for boys wouldn’t have anything to do with driving habits or comfort around cars later in life.
    Riiight.

  76. I don’t mean to derail, but this reasoning is flawed. It rests on the assumption that 1% more miles driven makes you 1% more likely to get into an accident.

    I think you wrote this backward — my assumption was more that 1% more miles driven makes you 1% *less* likely to get into an accident *if* the greater amount of time you spend exposed to the danger of an accident is controlled for.

    And of course it’s not perfect — women in Saudi Arabia who get 0 driving experience also have 0 accidents per million miles driven because they are never behind the wheel. We don’t have a lot of statistics on the accident rate of three year olds (though I suspect that it’s proportionately very high — *if* a three year old is driving a car, an accident will occur… it just almost never happens. :-))

    But the fact that the difference is as substantial as women get less than two-thirds the driving experience of men, but have only one-quarter more accidents… especially when you also note that women between the ages of 16 and 24 have substantially fewer accidents than men of the same age, but only 80% as much driving experience, and when you note too that men are three times more likely to be in a *fatal* accident than women… that all adds up. What that really seems to indicate is that women have a natural advantage as drivers (they start out better, and men need more than a third more driving experience to get a quarter better as far as fender benders go), but that this natural advantage is negated over time by the social pressure on men to drive and on women to defer to men as drivers, which lowers female confidence in their own driving skill and reduces the amount of practice they get.

    I will note that when I say “natural” advantage, that doesn’t necessarily mean biological and immutable — the advantage young women have as drivers over young men may be that women are socialized not to take risks and men are, and that when you have very little driving experience, taking risks is incredibly dangerous. Making young women more confident about taking risks might also make them worse drivers when they’re young. I just mean that when driving experience is equal, women are better drivers than men, and it takes years of men getting more practice before men get better than women, and men *never* get as much better than women as all their extra practice would imply.

  77. Well, someone has to be able to safely look at a map if necessary to figure out where they are going, and when pulled over to the curb ask people on the sidewalk for directions.

    And there’s a powerful social stereotype that women are especially good at reading maps, because of their greater spatial perceptive ability.

    Oh, wait. No. There isn’t.

    Since the stereotype is in fact that men are better at reading maps than women, if “who drives” was based on who should be freed up to be the navigating co-pilot with the map, logically it would be the man, because stereotypically men are good at reading maps and women are good at taking direction from men. In fact, our stereotype of the woman as navigating co-pilot is that she *can’t* read a map, and her husband won’t listen to her anyway and so they’ll get totally lost as she nags and whines that he’s going the wrong way. Also, he won’t pull over to *let* her ask for directions because that would impugn his precious masculine navigational ability.

    Logic has nothing to do with this. Men drive because they want to be in control. Period. Women aren’t better navigators, men aren’t better drivers, childfree people and people with older kids who can take care of themselves have the man drive too… there’s no “well, women are better at such-and-such so it makes sense for them to be the copilot” thing going on. It’s just all about control. And maybe secondarily about who’s encouraged to play with cars as a kid, but primarily it’s control.

  78. In our family, I prefer to do the driving if it’s city driving (and do, most of the time) because, frankly, I’m a terrible passenger when he’s driving if it’s the sort of driving that includes lots of choices and starts and stops (“Why did you turn there? It’s quicker the other way – there’s a pothole – (bump) – you hit the pothole” – etc.), and he’s kind of a jerky driver – physically, not tempermentally; he changes gears a bit less smoothly than I do, his stops are more abrupt, and all in all it sets my nerves on edge.
    Highway, we drive about equally – whoever’s tired doesn’t drive, usually. The main incentive to be the driver is not driving per se, but control of the musical selections.
    Husband is far from perfect, but he has no apparent control issues regarding the car.

  79. This reminds me of the issue of cars having “good visibility” – the ability of the driver to see out of the car.

    Big cars, like minivans and SUVs are said to have “good visibility” because you sit high, and can see up and over smaller cars. But, in my experience, I always found them to have bad visibility, in the form of huge blind spots, which make it hard to see things close to you.

    The concept of “good visibility” seems to be how a tall person sees the world. They can look over the people around them. But it ignores how a short person experiences the same issue, and the dangers of being literally overlooked, as when someone trips over a small child while walking, because the taller person doesn’t bother to pay attention to those who are smaller and thing that may be close.

    Given the statistical tendency for men to be taller than women, and for car designers to think about men more than women while designing the car, it gives an opportunity for another way for driving to be less comfortable for women than men.

    Women who are shorter may be less likely to feel the need to see “up and over” things, because it isn’t part of their daily experience, while a very tall man who is used to always seeing “up and over” might be made unconsciously uncomfortable in a car where he doesn’t have that ability. And because women are socialized to care for children, a blind spot which a child could be lost in might make women who are deeply socialized that way uncomfortable on an unconscious level, as well as possibly being uncomfortable knowing about such blind spot if she has the experience of being looked over by taller men.

  80. I drive a semi for a living. When I’m off duty? Chauffer me! If I’m not getting paid, I don’t want to take the wheel. Before I was a pro, I did most of the driving.

  81. My partner drives when we go anywhere together. He likes to drive, I like to look out of the window & faff with the tunes (apparently it’s dangerous to do both at the same time). It seems to suit us fine. (Also he criticised me driving when I used to do it, so I said fine, you chauffer me then.)

    As an aside, I once had a friend say he hated that women got better deals from insurance companies. Women had *more* accidents than men, he said. The difference was that women had smaller accidents, fender benders and the like, while men tended to write off cars. To this unsubstantiated claim I could only respond with: “Men write off more cars that insurance companies are asked to replace. Women have more accidents but claim less (if at all). Who’d you prefer to insure?” Ha!

  82. As an aside, I once had a friend say he hated that women got better deals from insurance companies. Women had *more* accidents than men, he said. The difference was that women had smaller accidents, fender benders and the like, while men tended to write off cars. To this unsubstantiated claim I could only respond with: “Men write off more cars that insurance companies are asked to replace. Women have more accidents but claim less (if at all). Who’d you prefer to insure?” Ha!

    It’s also the case that the better deal is only until you’re married or 30. Statistically, married men of any age are better drivers than unmarried men of the same age (this is why I’m pretty sure male bad driving is mostly socialized — men who have chosen a lifestyle that’s coded by society as “settled down” and “stable” may also choose to take fewer risks. In this regard it really sucks that gay men can’t get married in most states, because I think it would work the same for them.) And statistically, unmarried men under the age of 25 have *more* accidents than women, married or unmarried, of the same age. (I suspect that the actuarial tables are more accurate than that 1990’s study; insurance companies would lose money if they charged women less but women’s risk was more.)

    Once men become “better drivers” than women (in the sense of fewer accidents, although it takes many more years before they have an equal number of *fatal* accidents), men and women’s insurance rates become the same. So if your complaining friend was still paying more for his insurance than a woman of the same age, it’s because he was in an age cohort where the general concept that men have fewer accidents, over the set of all men, is *not true*, and all he had to do to get a deal equal to women’s deal on insurance is grow up. 🙂

    And yeah, if you have a choice between paying for six fender benders that each cost $1000, or one totalled car that you have to fork out $12000 for, it’s obvious which you’re going to need to have taken more money in premiums in order to cover it.

  83. I am always the driver when it is me and my husband.

    Several factors:
    1. I’m teetotal and always have been. So I have FAR more experience than almost any of my friends, which means he’s always seen everyone hand me the keys. And it means he can have a beer or glass of wine any time he wants knowing I’ll be sober to drive.
    2. I grew up on a farm then lived in LA for a few years, while he is born and bred in NY. So, over 10 years we’ve each been driving, I have owned 3 cars to his none (our joint car now is the one I had before we met), and driven probably 100,000 miles to his 10,000. So I am honestly just a much better, more instinctive driver, which he freely admits is the case.
    3. He’s really tall which means I fit more comfortably on the steering wheel side.
    4. We can both drive and chat at the same time, but only I can drive and NAVIGATE at the same time – I never use satnav and have an extremely good sense of direction (not to sound arrogant, but anyway – I guess we satisfy the “only women can multitask” but defy the “only men can navigate” stereotype). So if we’re going anywhere that he doesn’t know well, then if he drives, we can’t really talk, which is boring for us both.

    But all the above things are practical not political!

  85. Generally, who drives depends on whose car we take, mine or his. On long trips, especially when going to a large city, he drives and I navigate because those are our strong points.

    As for the freakonomics ass, I learned to drive a standard when I was 12. My mom taught me, and my first vehicle was a truck with standard transmission and no power steering.

  86. I didn’t get my license until I was 27 (health issues.) Frankly it really pisses me off that men who see driving as being in control don’t drive half the time, to share that control fairly. Oh no, him being driven around even once would be horrible shameful powerlessness and make him feel pathetically low and weak, but it’s perfectly OK for his wife/girlfriend to be in the passenger seat constantly.

  87. I wished I was able to drive when my ex and I would drive around, because I think he is a terrible driver. However, I have epilepsy, and no longer have a license, so I didn’t have a choice about it. And I would feel guilty about not being able to drive on long trips, because driving that whole time really sucks.

    When I did drive, I didn’t have a car of my own, ever, so when I did drive, and I drove a lot when I still lived in my hometown, it was my parents’ car. And they would have kittens if I ever let anyone else drive it. And my friends who either had their own cars or had access to cars always drove them themselves.

    My parents, however, still do the gendered thing. For a while my mom said it was because she did more driving than my dad, because she had a long commute to work, but I do think gender plays a huge role in it. However, on long trips they would alternate drivers, and employ my brother and sister if it was a family trip, too. Interestingly, my dad is the cautious, slow driver, two miles over the speed limit max, and my mom has always had a lead foot.

  88. OMG!!! You too, Lauren?! I thought I was the only one in the world whose father expected everyone else to have a bladder the size of the planet Jupiter. I was even told once to “stick my ass out the window” (I didn’t do it).

    I can’t tell you how many times I had to squat and pee next to the highway and get jeered at by passersby because dad couldn’t, or wouldn’t, find a gas station. Or the worst, when you’d pass by eight exits looking for a bathroom that my protective mother deemed “clean,” i.e. McDonald’s.

  89. @Lauren, ah, my sister once DID have to stick her ass out the window and go. It was interesting. My memory kind of blocked it out but I think the story was it was snowy and she didn’t want to leave the car.

    Neither did my parents want to stop for food (and NEVER at fast food restaurants), no, we had to have sandwiches in the car.

  90. I hate driving too, and my husband doesn’t mind, so he drives. But in my social circle, all the men drive, and all the women explain that it’s not sexist, they just don’t like to drive. Skimming the comments above, it looks like the number of women who say they hate driving is higher than the number who say they know or share a car with a man who hates it, although that could be sampling bias.

    So it makes me wonder whether women disliking driving could be a result of gender socialisation in some way. I’m not really sure what the mechanism could be, but the comment above that t there are a LOT of shitty, shitty, aggressive, stupid drivers on the road these days, and I find it very mentally taxing to drive, especially on the freeways. struck me particularly.

    Could it be that other drivers are ruder or more aggressive to female drivers? Probably not, because it’s hard to tell the sex of other drivers in other cars. Could it be that women are trained to avoid situations where others are acting aggressively, and men are trained to “man up” to them? Could it be that women are socialised to be constantly thinking about the difficulties/danger they might be putting themselves and their families into and that carries over onto the risk-laden situation of driving, while men are not socialised to worry about risk so much?

    These are all naive and open questions, but I do find myself wondering about them…

  91. Could it be that other drivers are ruder or more aggressive to female drivers?

    Interesting point regarding different attitudes towards both male and female drivers.

    In my experience, male drivers are more aggressive towards other male drivers. Sure, they tend to shake their heads and roll their eyes at what they perceive to be the slowness of some of the women drivers out there, but I find that they are likely to honk their cars more and stick the middle finger up at other male drivers.

    You could view it as something like aggressive one “up-man-ship.”.

  92. I have a counter anecdote for him. My late grandmother (rest her soul) taught women to drive trucks during WWII. Pretty sure there was no power steering then.

  93. I can’t read all the comments here so I apologize if someone has already said it but, seriously?

    I think all of you talking about “subtle dynamics” and the “undercurrents” and the “quiet phenomena” of men needing to feel in control have got it completely wrong.

    I still get emails discussing how bad women are at driving (purportedly) from people who think it’s hilarious. Maybe it’s because I’m a man, but I get this shit all the time. I even get emails about how bad women suck at using the ATM. (And yes, I tell people not to send crap to my inbox, but they don’t listen and I now just use the address as my electronic junk drawer.)

    I really think it’s firmly tied to out-and-out misogyny. Whatever subtle waftings and connivings that do afflict the population, I’m convinced, are not primarily sourced in men’s need to be in control- but in the way they are made to feel inferior if a women could ever be better than them at something. This is doubly so in any pursuit that is remotely technical. I freely admit my analysis of what’s at play is heavily colored by my experiences, but really- did I need to say it?

    Now in my own experience driving- I’ve been taking the wheel more often than not because I’m a relatively new driver trying to overcome his lack of skill on the road. It’s a “face-your-fear” sort of thing. That said, much as I do dislike driving and prefer to defer the task to someone else, I will not abide someone else driving my car unless I’m somehow incapacitated. I tend to be very particular about my possessions, and my car is no exception.

    My mother is a great defensive driver, though my father is better as maneuvering. My mother gets into more accidents (never her fault), but she also drives more and when she does drive, she spends less time on the highway than my father. In the end though, my father always drives, and my mother lets him: Why? I’m convinced that it’s because A)My mother doesn’t want to fight this particular battle since it’s he’s driving his car anyway. B) Who do you think sends me some of the email about how women are bad drivers? (Here’s a hint: It ain’t my mom.)

  94. I make my boyfriend drive just because i hate driving and I have a PJC. I get another ticket and I’m screwed.

  95. 1. Has this guy ever heard of hyperlinks? You know, so people can look at the data themselves?

    2. Link or no, it looks like the American Time Use Survey was (is?) self-reported. So … well. It’s not like self-reporting ever reflects internalised bias or assumptions about our roles (be they gender, etc.)

    Most ‘studies show’ reporting is pretty bad, but the Freako blog entry is phenomenally so.

  96. My car, I drive. Also, my current car is a stick shift, which he refuses to learn because of all the hills in our city. When travelling together, we take my car 95% of the time.

    When I had an automatic and he had no car, I occasionally allowed him to drive while I was in the car, but it was no where near 50-50.

    The most irritating thing about having him as a passenger is that he is an extremely annoying backseat driver. And I am easily irritated. This behaviour is despite the fact that I have been driving for at least twice as long as he has, and in fact taught him to drive. He didn’t get his license until he was 30 years old. No matter how many times I tell him I hate it when he tells me how to drive and how belittling it is, he can’t seem to help himself. As a result, he has learned to always bring bus fare if we are driving around town, as every now and then I will lose it and kick him out of the car.

    Also, he gets car sick easily so can’t read maps (or any reading material) so I both pilot and navigate on long trips.

  97. I remember hearing for the first time that when there is a male/female couple in a car, the male is most likely to end up the driver.

    I HAD NEVER, EVER HEARD THIS BEFORE! I was about 21! It had never even crossed my mind! Because for all of my life, my mother is the one who drives 98% of the time. It is a rarity that when my mother & father are together that he will drive. Rare enough to encourage remarks.

    I didn’t learn to drive until I was 22. My father, mother, and (then) boyfriend taught me. I very much enjoy driving. I like the way I drive. I like blasting my music & using the car as my semi-private recording booth. I think I am a good driver and will jump at the chance to be the driver.

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