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As we have discussed in class, the people you don't expect to be aggressive behind the wheel are the ones you most need to be concerned about. I suppose that men are more aggressive; however, women are not the sweet non-aggressive creatures some perceive. I read in the Sunday paper that women are increasingly becoming more aggressive behind the wheel.and Wilfred Lee (G7) wrote:
Is there much of a difference between genders when referring to aggressive driving? I thought women drove as bad as men did. :) Or did I get my facts crossed?Another student hadn't really thought of gender as being part of the issue concerning aggression. MaryElizabeth Pacheco (G7) replies:
As I have mentioned in an earlier reply, I have not come across much research specifying the gender behind the wheel. I only assumed that because of social norms and characteristic of the male gender, that most aggressive driving is committed by the male gender. I too am interested in the cases where women are responsible. I will start to search the web and its newsgroups. I recommend these student do the same if they haven't already.At the same time we can see how stereotypes make a big impact on how we perceive things. In MaryElizabeth's situation, the male stereotype influenced her idea of how aggressive men are. In a similar line, discrimination can also affect how we think and feel about others. A Web visitor, Brisaacs, shares his view of bad drivers altogether. He wrote (November 1997):
I hate to say this but it is usually the people of ethnic backgrounds, women, and older people that cannot drive.Obviously, he has something against others. In response to this statement, Ryan Shintani states:
I think that this person has a few deep rooted problems that he has to deal with before he can tackle the topic of road rage. Let me see what is this man's problems. Well, I gather from his e-mail that he is a racist, a sexist and he discriminates against the elderly. Did I leave anything out? I don't think that this man can see past his own blind vision to see anything else, so it would be the case that he is a very aggressive driver that is trying to defend his way of driving. I wouldn't doubt that he cuts people off or shows that finger on a regular basis. He should really go to some anger management classes or some form of therapy.
As we have discussed in class the study that someone did says that women are more aggressive drivers. I don't think that this study is right. It could have been biased by the way that people answered the questions. I think that term is self-actualization. The males might have wanted to make themselves look better. I think that a study will just have to be genderless, unless a set of questions can be developed that will account for the differences that are afforded to each gender because in certain areas women are more truthful then men, but in others men are more truthful. Well that is just my views on the matter.
Demographics, I think are not as important as treating this problem as a whole. Instead of why men drive more aggressively than women, we should think about why people drive aggressively. By questioning the difference between men and women we are not trying to find a solution in my opinion, but instead just looking for more why's.
The trouble with all this, as no doubt Andrew would agree, is that we need
to be far more precise with our data to draw any conclusions. The first
problem is that men have very varying hours of driving themselves.
Let's take those who are in jobs which keep them on the road all the time - sales and marketing staff. I would suggest there would be very little difference in the statistics. But that isn't because the hours of driving are similar, but because the women in these fields are not typical of women in general. These women don't mind being on the road, travelling around, being away from home. These are career women with strong ambitions. They are working in what is generally a male-dominated field. Without any reflection on their femininity, they have what is traditionally a more male role, and therefore are going to be strong-willed, assertive and determined. In
all likelihood, they will also drive like men - i.e. more assertively than many women drivers.
But that doesn't follow. You've got two points here and I'd like to tackle both. The second one first. If you spend less time driving, you are going to be less experienced and if you are less experienced, you are more likely to have an accident, because you lack the practice and ability to foresee potential dangers.
A classic example is the fact that I do far more driving than my husband because he commutes to work by train, and I, by car. Therefore, we have only one car and it's in my name. When he recently drove it (for the first time in a while) to visit a friend in north London, he was involved in an accident. He was actually trying to avoid an accident ahead of him and the car in front, also taking evasive action, collided with him. I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly how it all happened, but I couldn't help wondering whether because he was out of practice, he possibly failed to foresee it before it was too late.
Now, onto the first part of your comment above. Some time ago, I conducted a survey about this at work following a discussion about the relative merits of male vs. female drivers. It transpired that while all the females were very happy and confident drivers, if their partner's were with them, almost invariably their partner's drove. Most had never even questioned this until it was brought to their attention. Why is this? Lots of sociological answers that I'm not going to go into here, but I'm sure most reading this can work it out for themselves.
Men or women drivers? Check out the statistics for fatalities from road accidents. See what age and sex the majority of them are. Then ask yourself who are the better drivers.
First a disclaimer: This is by no means a criticism of REAL women drivers, who we all know are impeccable drivers.
Why does the Salem DMV allow women to drive? Every time (almost) a woman takes the wheel, she ends up in the ditch or hugging a tree. Laura just had an accident, Sammie had a couple, Jen had a few (not counting the fake one last month), etc. Furthermore these accidents always happen on a deserted road, never in the city.
Most of you won't want to hear this, but I've found that the most dangerous drivers are middle-aged men. They are probably competent, but road rage turns them into idiots.
I've never really had any problems with women drivers. e.g. yesterday I had a close encounter with a 60-year-old bloke who thought a "watch for traffic" sign means to give way to them. There's no arguing with these dead heads, you just have to play passive and get rid of them.
young male drivers are often involved in accidents caused by speeding and veering off the lane, whereas young female drivers are over represented in accidents at intersections or during lane changes.Despite those results, her overall researched implied that women drivers were equal, if not better, to men.
we become more aware of the dialectic relationship between a driver's behavior and attitudes and the constant, all-pervasive social influence on the driver.In chapter seven, we define social issues which Rothe describes as:
public artifacts. That is, certain situations, events, or behaviors have been defines and categorized according to criteria that penetrate a public consciousness.I firmly believe that gender differences are a social issue, and what we think of each gender can influence our behavior and reflect how we feel. A couple of other chapters that we can relate gender differences into are chapters eight and eleven. In chapter eight, the section on media effects discuss how programming content can influence antisocial behaviors, create underrepresentation issues, as well as misrepresent things such as sex-role stereotyping. In chapter eleven Multiperspectivism: The European experience, it talks about how motivation studies support target group programs, to help in safety problems. One safety campaign is directed toward young drivers in which life-style, recreational behavior, culture, and sex-specific differences will be taken into account. At this time I'm not sure of any real differences between the sexes, but the according to this campaign differences exist.
