Usenet and Web Discussions on Gender and Driving

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Newsgroup Article Number 1

Newsgroup Article Number 2

Newsgroup Article Number 3

Survey On Gender Differences in Driving

SUMMARY

The following excerpts are the articles I found on Dejanews about gender differences in driving. Some of them are actually separate issues where one postings maybe talking about women drivers, and another about men drivers. Here are the newsgroups I found where they discuss gender differences:

Subject: Women Drivers *** WHY
From: av122@chebucto.ns.ca (Duncan Stewart)
Date: 1998/03/27
Message-ID: <6fg73m$3si$1@News.Dal.Ca>
Newsgroups: ns.general

Received: from av122@localhost by chebucto.ns.ca id <90674-27958>; Fri, 27 Mar 1998 08:27:29 -0400
From: Duncan Stewart
To: av122@chebucto.ns.ca
Subject: (fwd) (:)PIGS--Woman Driver
Message-Id: <19980327122729Z90674-27958+25@chebucto.ns.ca>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 08:27:15 -0400
Return-Path:
X-Orcpt: rfc822;av122@chebucto.ns.ca

Women Drivers
I tell you, women drivers are a hazard to traffic. Driving to work this morning
on the 102( Bicentennial DR.) I look over to my left and there's this woman in
a Mustang doing 65 miles per hour with her face up next to her rear view mirror
putting on her eyeliner! I look away for a couple seconds and when I look back
she's halfway over in my lane. "Scared me so bad I dropped my electric shaver in my coffee.

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Subject: Re: Driving women-a public danger
From: "Michael J. Glew"
Date: 1998/04/02
Message-ID: <3522E2E0.3CE415F4@au1.ibm.com>
Newsgroups: aus.cars

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 60yo bloke why 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.
Mike.

P.S. Like anything else, there are exceptions.

Cuong Tran [ENS] wrote:
>
> Alexander Hinz wrote:
> >
> > Driving women-a public danger!
> >
> > Many people have the opinion, that women are the better driver,
> because they are very careful.
> > But I and a lot of friends think different. The caution only depends
> > on fear and ignorance towards cars function. General I have nothing
> > against women, but i often made this experience in the daily traffic.
> > What«s your opinion?
>
> Yes and No. I'm not saying I'm the best and safest driver on the roads,
> but what I find most disturbing are these young girls driving
> small-medium sized cars and zooming in and out of traffic. Thats what
> scares the crap out of me. As for being more careful ... NO.
> They put too much faith in the cars, and should anything occur, the car
> will get them out of danger. WRONG.
> And the only other times, women drivers really get to me are the pre-
> and post-school hours. What an utter chaos. Imagine, two/three/a damn
> bunch of screaming kids, with mum in the 4wd tailgating you, so you
> drive quicker, and so they can get rid of their kids faster.
> aaarrrggghhh!!!! I'm glad I'm not on the roads then......
>
> Anyway, my 2c worth to the pot.
>
> Cheers, C.,

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Subject: Re: Cars and incidents
From: Chris Lawrence
Date: 1998/03/13
Message-ID: <@spacetime.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: demon.local

In news article <5ETqBAA1FFC1EwL9@vanillapod.demon.co.uk>
on Thu, 12 Mar 1998, Vivianne wrote:
>I don't care about Pete and Leo's so called slagging off of women
>drivers because we all know that it is just trolling as per usual.
I occasionally hear an advert on the radio for an insurance scheme aimed
at women drivers which says "Since _men_ are responsible for x% of all
motoring accidents, why should you have to pay through higher insurance"
(something like that). There is a really nasty sneer to the way "men"
is said, as if to say "men (ha! that useless shower of bastards who
serve no purpose on this earth).."

So men can be targetted in the same way. From my experience, I think
that women drivers are worse than men, given that I've probably
encountered a fair cross-section of drivers. I can't say fairer than that.

--
Chris, in Liverpool, UK http://www.spacetime.demon.co.uk/
WARNING - You must replace 'news' with 'news00' to reply by email

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The only thing I found on gender differences on the web, which I thought should be good to share with everybody visiting my page, is the survey conducted by Dr. James from our class. Here are the results:

MALE/FEMALE DIFFERENCES:

1) Women rate themselves as less aggressive than men rate themselves
2) Women experience more stress than men
3) Women see themselves as driving less aggressively than men see themselves
4) Men feel more competitive than women
5) Men feel more peaceful than women
6) Women support stronger law enforcement and more electronic surveillance than men

LESS EXPERIENCED (1 TO 8 YEARS)
MORE EXPERIENCED (9 YEARS AND MORE)

1) Those with more experience see themselves as more aggressive but they feel less stress than those with less experience
2) Those with more experience also feel more competitive and want to drive more dangerously than those with less experience
3) Those with more experience see other drivers as less aggressive while those with less experience see other drivers as more aggressive

CORRELATED PATTERNS:

1) Those who rate themselves as good drivers have less fantasies of violence
2) Those who experience more stress are less competitive
3) Those who experience more stress support more surveillance

MY OPINION

The survey done by Dr. James just proves to me that there are some major differences between male and female drivers. As shown in the results, male drivers tend to drive more aggressively than female drivers do. The reason why I think they're more aggressive is because they're very competitive, whether they're driving on the road or playing games. Women, on the other hand, drive with a purpose -- like to pick up their kids, go grocery shopping, or go home to cook dinner for the family. We have more responsibilities that we need to accomplish, that's why you see us speeding sometimes, or even drive carelessly. Women experienced more stress on the road probably because of those responsibilities and we're more attentive to our surroundings and to our driving than males do. And also we try to follow the laws more often than males do, because as the results have shown we support stonger law enforcement. That's just my opinion anyway, so don't take this as a personal attack on males.

[Thanks Robert (Nakagawa) for giving me the idea to include the results of the survey taken from our class!!!]

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SUMMARY

Most of the discussions I got from the newsgroups are obviously against women drivers because the writers think that women are really bad drivers. One of the writers mentioned that he saw a woman putting on eyeliner while driving 65 mph and from that experience he concluded that women are dangerous drivers. Sometimes, it's true that some women put make-up while driving but that doesn't mean that all women drivers are like that. I think, some of these postings are so prejudice against women and it also seems like they all stereotype women as bad drivers because of one or two women drivers they encountered on the road driving dangerously. Another issue mentioned about women drivers is that of a mother picking up her children after school. The writer of this posting said that he hates it when a woman driver with 3 or 4 children on the car tailgate him. All I can say about this guy is he just assumed that the driver of a car with children in them are women -- again this is another stereotype about women. That's not true at all because I have seen fathers picking up their children in school or dropping them off. It just so happen that there are more women who drive their children to school and pick them up from school.

Another writer mentioned that he finds young girls to be dangerous drivers because they zoom in and out of traffic, but to be honest I see more young boys drive that way. Especially they like to race and show off what their cars can do, and I don't think a lot of young girls really enjoy racing with one another. I don't want to be sexist like the writers of these postings, but I just want to point out some of the facts I know about women drivers because most of what these writers pointed out are purely about stereotyping. All I know is that we (women drivers) drive more carefully than men do that's why we are being labeled as bad drivers because we don't drive like them. Also, I noticed there are more postings about women drivers than about men drivers when I was searching the newsgroups. But most of them are against women drivers and I think that's really bad for our image because everyone who reads these postings will have the idea that, that's how we drive.


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