Who Drives Better: Men or Women?

Ever since the dawning of the twentieth century and with women sitting at the driver’s seat a debate has been lead about who is a better driver: women or men.

Almost as difficult to answer to as the debate about the chicken and the egg, it stimulates researchers to prove either this or that. Many a research have tried to give answer to the question: Are men better drivers than women? Here is what they have found out.

Riskier behaviour

There have been some studies which showed that women tend to display more responsible behaviour, whereas men do not care so much about being cautious as women do.

This is why men drive faster and closer to other cars, they take the risk of not wearing seat belts and even drive intoxicated more often. And during driving, they make riskier turns and park faster (and more accurately, though).

Additionally, men are 25% more likely to get a ticket for aggressive driving than women, so their accuracy and proficiency does not mean that they are better drivers if we take this into account.

State of mind

A recent survey by an insurance company “showed that only 28 per cent of women believed they were better drivers than men – and only 13 per cent of men thought women were better behind the wheel.”Even though some research show that men are better at some driving tasks, the psychologists have concluded that it is not that easy to determine if men are indeed better at driving than women.

They believe it has got something to do with perception. Women tend to lack confidence while driving, they are often insecure at making decisions, whereas men manifest their confidence easily since they are perceived by the world to be better drivers, which additionally boosts their confidence.

Talk about the vicious circle! As this study suggests, it is not really about the real innate ability; rather, it is about the state of the mind and perception, that is ‘approval’ by the world. Since we are social beings we need our actions to be approved by others, so we tend to behave accordingly.

Safe driving

When it comes to safe driving, the battle of sexes has interesting data to show. The aforementioned survey also showed than women were marked better than men on average in 14 different aspects of driving: women scored the average of 23.6 points out of 30, whereas men scored only 19.8!

Some of the aspects they have been tested on were the following: tailgating the vehicle in front, cutting into traffic, courtesy, etc. Another interesting point that the study revealed was that men tend to overestimate their driving skills.

What this research also suggests is that, even though men tend to be better learners and performers in driving lessons, women seem to retain the information they have learned better. And, men seem to cause crashes more than women, according to another study. This is exactly why men have to be reminded of how bad drivers they are and be sent to learning lessons again.

Constant learning

Even though some think that there is no point in attending driving classes, there is that thing that we have to learn all our lives. Even though some may need more time than the others, they can learn and be as good as anybody in the end.

It can often be seen that men drivers have to attend driving classes after they have been constantly ticketed. This means that they need learning, too.

What you should remember is that there is nothing wrong with learning and refreshing your memory about the rules. If you want to accelerate learning in a structured learning programme, you can consider going to a Liverpool driving school and learn to drive better.

And finally, what we can learn from all these examples is that even though men seem more confident at driving than women, they, too, make mistakes more often, whereas women are more cautious and take fewer risks than men. We also learned that confidence may be the key to success.

Imagine what would happen if the paradigm changed: what if women would no longer be told that they are worse drivers? In order to become a better driver, one must learn from both sexes and forget about the stereotypes: drive safely and confidently.