Are Women Worse Drivers Than Men?

It’s one of those old stereotypes that you’d hoped would have died out by now, but alas, it hasn’t. The idea that women are uniformly terrible drivers is an opinion still held by an alarmingly high amount of people.

It’s such a bizarre stereotype. It’s as if those that hold it believe us ladies just can’t quite get our little minds around the idea of how to control a car. We don’t know what we’re doing! We’re way too busy using the rear-view mirror to adjust our lipstick, right? We just get distracted by shining things so easily! That’s why women are constantly getting into accidents, effectively living on https://www.quittance.co.uk/ as we try to puzzle through our latest whoopsie.

It’s so tiring.

And the fun part? It’s also so wrong. There’s countless evidence to support this. The likes of http://www.telegraph.co.uk and http://www.express.co.uk/  keep publishing studies which show that women are definitely not worse drivers than men. We get into fewer accidents; a simple statistic that is rewarded by the fact our car insurance is usually far cheaper than it would be for a guy with the same driving history. Those two studies above are nearly a year apart, too – there’s just consistent evidence that women are safer, more careful, abler behind the wheel than our male counterparts.

So why is this a stereotype that persists? In fact, it doesn’t just persist: it gets worse. There will always be some boorish “bro” who, upon hearing the plane he is on is being piloted by a woman, will make some kind of chauvinistic joke. So given the fact there is absolutely no evidence to corroborate it, why do some guys still hold this opinion in 2017?

1) Women Are More Cautious Drivers

For some people, being cautious is not a sign of – well, just that really. It’s a sign of weakness, or that you can’t make your mind up. Women have a tendency to be more careful behind the wheel, free from the testosterone-fueled behavior of the stereotypical “boy racer”.

2) Women Don’t Boast About Their Driving Ability

Obviously this is a generalization, but it’s a true one: when was the last time you heard a woman announcing she was a great driver? It doesn’t really happen. We’re more likely to be proud of our careers and our accomplishments than something so basic, and in fairness, society allows this to be the case. Being a good driver has been equated with “manliness” for decades now.

3) We Own Our Mistakes

Women are more likely to admit when they made a mistake behind the wheel than our male counterparts. That’s not to say men don’t make these mistakes; they do, but they’ll just blame another driver//the weather/the car itself etcetera, etcetera. To these ears, when a woman admits an error, it’s an admission of weakness.

Despite all of the above, the stats speak up for the ladies when it comes to which gender is best behind the wheel.