Driving Between Men and Women

¶ … Driving Between Men and Women

Men and women differ in their behavior in many different ways. Driving is just one example of that observation. There are likely many psychological reasons that explain this difference. In general, males are more confident, territorial, and more easily provoked into becoming aggressive in their behavior. Men are also more likely to take risks in general. All of these behavioral differences are reflected in the way that men and women interact with other drivers. Additionally, men and women tend to differ in their interest in cars and in their respective knowledge about automobile mechanics and in their comparative abilities to maintain their cars and to perform routine repairs. As a result, men and women have very different styles of driving.

The fact that men tend to be more confident than women has been demonstrated by many different types of psychological experiments and studies. Men are more likely to speak in group situations, to stick to their original opinions when they are questioned by others, and to take risks of many different kinds. By contrast, women are more likely to wait longer before talking in group situations, to change their opinions when confronted by challenges to their points-of-view, and they are more careful about taking or avoiding risks. When it comes to driving, these types of differences mean that male drivers are more assertive in any situation where they have to choose to take the right of way or to yield the right of way to other drivers under the same circumstances. Male drivers are probably more likely to believe that they have the right of way than female drivers in the same circumstances and to worry about being impolite to other drivers.

Because men are much more territorial than women, in general, that difference also affects the way they drive. For example, a male driver is quicker to feel annoyed or threatened by another driver following too closely or who appears to be challenging them for the right of way. A female driver might respond to another driver's careless but unintentional actions on the road in a polite or forgiving way, even assuming that she is the one who might have made a mistake. Meanwhile, a male driver is more likely to take offense at the careless actions of another driver. They are also much more likely to assume that carelessness is evidence of rudeness or a lack of respect for them.

Whereas a female driver might allow other drivers to pass her, a male driver might speed up to prevent the other driver from passing easily. These types of responses are so determined by biological tendencies that men may not even be aware that they are responding this way and may speed up unconsciously. Likewise, if another driver tries to cut in front of a male driver at an exit ramp, he might purposely move his car forward to prevent the other driver from doing so and to become angry over the fact that the other driver just attempted to cut in front of him. In the same situation, a female driver is much more likely to give permission and allow the other driver to cut in front of her. Men are much more prone to road rage and provoked into verbal or even physical altercations with other drivers over their respective points-of-view about which driver had the right of way or which driver did something disrespectful to the other. Men are much more likely to make rude comments about other drivers to their passengers and to make obscene gestures to other drivers who annoy them, such as by "giving them the finger" through their window.

Sometimes, these differences can be harmful to male drivers. Because they are more confident than female drivers, men are more likely than women to drive substantially above the speed limit. For the same reasons, insurance companies tend to charge male drivers more for their insurance, even when all of their other informational details are very similar or the same. Some of the evidence of these differences is that male drivers account for more speeding tickets than female drivers and male drivers have a higher rate of accidents than female drivers. Before the widespread availability of global positioning system (GPS) technology, male drivers were more likely to get lost driving in strange places because they are much less comfortable asking strangers for directions than female drivers. Whereas women are usually comfortable asking others for help, many men are reluctant to do so because they believe it makes them look bad or threatens their masculinity to admit that they do not know something.