New UK Study Suggests Women Better Drivers Than Men

This 'news' has already been thoroughly beaten into the ground, without this additional example.

We all get it. Retractions of 'scientific' studies for publishing impossible data are becoming common place, and the misrepresentations are now absurdly bold.

Well, clearly there is more to being a good driver than speeding tickets and accidents. Who chose those stupid criteria?

Looking beyond the fanciful conclusion for a moment, the methodology of this study is highly suspect....

.

What need is being served by collecting this data via interviews, that justifies the numerous additional biases introduced by conducting interviews, and relying on self reporting to assess performance?

.

This study collected its data via questionnaire and interview, which introduces several significant sources of error, not the least of which is imperfect recall. Additionally there are bound to be significant statistical differences in forthrightness and over/under reporting of vehicular transgressions for men compared to women in various social situations.

.

The time, expense and high potential for error introduction involved with interviewing 600 people for information readily available as public records, strongly suggests they could not obtain the information they desired reviewing the vast, inexpensive and expedient public records.

... and to add to the criticism, there's no mention of whether or not they factored in the driver mileage.

It is intersting to look at the picture.

The image suggests a female driver, left hand drive vehicle - Europe or USA -doing 140 kph (87mph) or 140 mph and best of all NOT holding the steering wheel inthe correct manner particularly at that speed!

I don't think there is any doubt that women are responsible for fewer traffic accidents than men.

However, women hardly are competitive on the race tracks. A few have tried to compete, but the results are pretty poor. One female has won an Indy Car race (in Japan), and none have won a Nascar race (that I know of).

This brings up the question; Just what is "better" driving?

Exactly - what is better driving is the question. My wife has had fewer tickets than I do, but she consistently drives over easily avoided planted spots beside the driveway I don't want driven over, takes up too much room in the garage, and has backed her car into my parked car more than once.

In my, and most male/female relationships I am aware of, the man does most of the driving, so logs the most time behind the wheel, and so is more likely to have an incident.

Proof my arse!

Apparently they found 700 men and women that drove the same amount under the same conditions facing the same dangers to allow them to produce an accurate comparison. Really.

And why is the news source for this article a car hire comparison search engine? I trust that as I would the autoblog website with its scam adverts!

Try putting the car into reverse, and use only mirrors to look back.

I'll bet the scores would change!