Why is it women?

[julieca]

I have known so many women who restrict where and when they drive because of anxiety. They won't drive at night, in the rain, in cities, places they don't know, etc, etc. And sadly it is always women, not men.

I know for some there will be issues such as astigmatism that means driving at night is not safe. But men can also suffer from these issues. Yet I rarely meet a man who restricts where and when he drives, unless he is very elderly.

So why is it always women who are anxious about driving?

The last F1 race i watched they all kept crashing into the edge or each other even though they were all going the same direction and tgey got to practice the day before.

Cars (and nearly every other bloody thing) is designed for an average male body, meaning that many women are manoeuvring vehicles from a position that doesn’t give them optimal visibility.

I wonder if women were driving cars designed for their size whether the gender differences in spatial awareness and the oft touted reversing skills would disappear?

The gender differences in car crash outcomes are appalling too because female bodies aren’t taken into account in the testing and design of safety features.

I wonder if women were driving cars designed for their size whether the gender differences in spatial awareness and the oft touted reversing skills would disappear?

I doubt it because the design of cars is totally unrelated to us having worse spatial awareness. I'm sure I read testosterone actually plays a part in it.

I think it would help enormously. I'm of a height within normal limits for a man so don't struggle but my Mum has had huge problems over the years with getting a safe and comfortable driving position. She learnt to drive with the aid of a cushion!

Many cars result in small women struggling to reach the pedals without the steering wheel touching their body. Visibility can be terrible too if you are shorter than the driver the car was designed for. Then there is the issue of the sun visor being too high, controls being too far away etc etc.

My parents limited the cars they owned because there were many my Mum couldn't drive safely. At one time my Dad did most of the family driving because Mum struggled to drive the larger of the two cars due to these issues and her car was a bit cramped for the whole family.

She was always happy to drive on any class of road all over the country in a suitable car, but finding a suitable car was not always easy.

But spatial awareness isn't just used for driving. If you have worse spatial awareness than somebody else it'll still be worse if you buy a different car.

@AvocadoTrees

If this is a thing, it’s a UK thing. Im not in the UK and I don’t know of a single person, male or female, who carries on like a pork chop like some of the posters here over “anxiety“ about driving. You just get your license when you are about 18 then start driving everywhere, end of story. No one is has anxiety about it. Probably helps that public transport is shit anywhere outside a major city cbd so you do have to drive if you want to go anywhere at all.

I'm interested in where you live. I think the UK has challenges that don't exist in some other countries, such as very narrow roads that were not designed to take cars.

A friend lived in the US for years. When she moved back here after over 20 years it look her a long time before she was happy driving here again (she originally learned to drive here) because the roads were so much smaller than she was used to.

Ego…. Obviously

I must admit I don't like driving at night, I used to drive more but it has become so busy. I drive to work

If I need to drive somewhere I will

Hmm Eightwheelgirl might be right about the spatial awareness but a lot of that might be practice/ social conditioning. Remember that "Can our kids go gender free?" docu where the boys were better at spatial awareness puzzles to begin with, but after the whole class practised every week for a while, the girls caught up. This stuff starts very early- one experiment where toddlers were given manual dexterity tasks to do under adult supervision showed that the adult jumped in to "help" (ie just do it for them) the girls much quicker than the boys.

This persists into adulthood. Typically, men do most of the driving and all of the "difficult bits" when both are going somewhere together. Amusingly, my ex boyfriend and also my current husband, to a lesser extent, seemed to want to engineer things to be at the wheel when we arrived somewhere even if we had shared the driving, if our destination was somewhere people we knew would see us arriving. All of a piece with him getting cash from me before we went to the pub, if he needed it, rather than take the cash from me in front of his friends. At the time I was working and he was the SAHP so entirely reasonable for me to provide the cash for us both, but pride meant that he didn't really want to be seen to do so in public.

I definitely agree that men are expected to push on through the fear of new things without showing it. And also with the PP who said that women are socially conditioned to worry more about inconveniencing others if they make a balls of things...I remember silently dying inside any time I stalled at a junction as a learner, especially the time it happened in the middle of a junction.

@powershowerforanhour

Hmm Eightwheelgirl might be right about the spatial awareness but a lot of that might be practice/ social conditioning. Remember that "Can our kids go gender free?" docu where the boys were better at spatial awareness puzzles to begin with, but after the whole class practised every week for a while, the girls caught up. This stuff starts very early- one experiment where toddlers were given manual dexterity tasks to do under adult supervision showed that the adult jumped in to "help" (ie just do it for them) the girls much quicker than the boys.

This persists into adulthood. Typically, men do most of the driving and all of the "difficult bits" when both are going somewhere together. Amusingly, my ex boyfriend and also my current husband, to a lesser extent, seemed to want to engineer things to be at the wheel when we arrived somewhere even if we had shared the driving, if our destination was somewhere people we knew would see us arriving. All of a piece with him getting cash from me before we went to the pub, if he needed it, rather than take the cash from me in front of his friends. At the time I was working and he was the SAHP so entirely reasonable for me to provide the cash for us both, but pride meant that he didn't really want to be seen to do so in public.

I definitely agree that men are expected to push on through the fear of new things without showing it. And also with the PP who said that women are socially conditioned to worry more about inconveniencing others if they make a balls of things...I remember silently dying inside any time I stalled at a junction as a learner, especially the time it happened in the middle of a junction.

I think much of it is innate as I believe testosterone plays a part. Apparently women with higher levels of testosterone outperform other women at spatial rotation tasks. Although obviously there will be individual women who have great spatial awareness and some men who are poor at it. Mine must be half decent as I have no problem manoeuvring big trucks around tight spaces.

I remember reading that women are typically better at some aspects though, one being identifying spatial landmarks, and that apparently are more likely to follow memorised routes when driving. It’s also been found more recently that when there is no time limit women are able to match men in mental rotation tasks.

@TheFreaksShallInheritTheEarth

I have a touring caravan. I am the only woman I have ever seen towing; it's always the male partner! So there seems to be some reluctance about towing, too.

I am a fellow tower #waves! Quite happy to hitch up and drag two horses around the countryside and can reverse like a pro. Am also quite used to getting stared at when hubby is in the passenger seat as it must look a bit unusual - I also tow our big trailer tent around, DH genuinely has no interest in it!