Photo: Hyundai UK
This based on personal experience, not a study, but I find it about three times more likely for a male driver to allow you to merge into his lane or join the traffic from a side-street than when a woman is at the wheel.
But talking about gender-specific behavior is a dangerous thing to do because it's a touchy subject a lot of people have strong opinions on. And if there's one place you don't want to end up is in front of an angry feminist. Oh my God, I've done it again.
Joke aside, you do get the feeling that women drivers are very easily irritated. The consensus is that females are less likely to be involved in accidents and they are generally driving slower and more carefully. That doesn't necessarily make them better drivers, it's just that when things go bad, they do so at slower speeds, meaning that the damage done won't be that serious.
A new research on 1,000 UK drivers ordered by Hyundai and conducted by the Goldsmiths University London has revealed some rather interesting facts regarding gender-split traffic behavior. Differentiating between the two genders was not the study's initial intention, but upon analyzing the data it obtained, this surprising pattern emerged.
According to the numbers, women are 12 percent angrier than men on average. The test saw drivers get undertaken or be shouted or beeped at, but the biggest difference in scores was when the person at the wheel was confronted with a back-seat driver (women were 14 percent angrier) or when they had to deal with a motorist who would not indicate (13% angrier).
Patrick Fagan, the behavioral psychologist from Goldsmiths University London who led the project also offered an explanation: “Psychologically, women score higher than men on emotional and verbal intelligence, and on the personality trait of neuroticism. Evolutionary theory suggests our early female ancestors had to develop an acute sense of danger for anything that threatened them and their young if their cave was undefended while men were out hunting. That ‘early warning system’ instinct is still relevant today, and women drivers tend to be more sensitive to negative stimuli, so get angry and frustrated quicker.”
There is a simplified version of the DET (Driving Emotion Test) that you can take online - I did and got a score of 99, which is considered average. Then again, I will probably send the link to my wife and see if the study gets validated.
Joke aside, you do get the feeling that women drivers are very easily irritated. The consensus is that females are less likely to be involved in accidents and they are generally driving slower and more carefully. That doesn't necessarily make them better drivers, it's just that when things go bad, they do so at slower speeds, meaning that the damage done won't be that serious.
A new research on 1,000 UK drivers ordered by Hyundai and conducted by the Goldsmiths University London has revealed some rather interesting facts regarding gender-split traffic behavior. Differentiating between the two genders was not the study's initial intention, but upon analyzing the data it obtained, this surprising pattern emerged.
According to the numbers, women are 12 percent angrier than men on average. The test saw drivers get undertaken or be shouted or beeped at, but the biggest difference in scores was when the person at the wheel was confronted with a back-seat driver (women were 14 percent angrier) or when they had to deal with a motorist who would not indicate (13% angrier).
Patrick Fagan, the behavioral psychologist from Goldsmiths University London who led the project also offered an explanation: “Psychologically, women score higher than men on emotional and verbal intelligence, and on the personality trait of neuroticism. Evolutionary theory suggests our early female ancestors had to develop an acute sense of danger for anything that threatened them and their young if their cave was undefended while men were out hunting. That ‘early warning system’ instinct is still relevant today, and women drivers tend to be more sensitive to negative stimuli, so get angry and frustrated quicker.”
There is a simplified version of the DET (Driving Emotion Test) that you can take online - I did and got a score of 99, which is considered average. Then again, I will probably send the link to my wife and see if the study gets validated.
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