I think, probably, this is one of the most debated questions in the history of human kind.  Men and women are all curious about the differences between them, but in reality what they are curious about is: which sex is more capable? Men or women?

Last week N-Man said a typical male comment in a moment of anger. He empathizes with Saudis for not allowing women to drive! Naturally, I found the comment to be sexist. I tried to argue that this is a myth, but obviously the male ego is much larger than any logical arguments. Therefore, we started an experiment; while driving together we would count the number of weighty mistakes and check what the gender of the driver is.

We decided that we can only count violations that we see while we are in the same car, because each one of us was trying to prove a point.  Also, N-man excluded taxi drivers, which is as a shame really, since taxi drivers are a great source to prove that men are not better drivers than women!

Now the count was 6 to 8. Women made more mistakes in the few hours we were together in the car… I am sure that another hour would have balanced the accounts.

However, this was not the point, even though I would like you to go through a similar process and count driving mistakes and let us know about the number of mistakes made by women vs. men.

Anyway

I think the end result was that women’s mistakes were very different from men’s. Men tend to drive more aggressively than women and display their aggression in a direct manner. I feel their aggression is related to either impatience or to showing off… They break the law, they take silly and unnecessary risks… Women on the other hand, I don’t know… my feeling is that they make mistakes because they lack knowledge in road rules or possibly lack of experience? I mean they hesitate, they flinch, they don’t respect priorities. I don’t know…

I also think that men are conditioned socially to be drivers… they grow up loving cars and fantasizing about driving them… on a different note, women sometimes use the myth that they are worse drivers as an excuse to get by or break the laws…

I asked several people about their ideas on women and men driving skills:

N-man, driving for 9 years, Amman

“men, because women lack motor skills”

Feras, driving for 17 years, Madaba

“men drive better, they have more technical  skills.”

Abeer, driving for one year, Baqa’a

“Men, they know how to deal with the car better than women”

Hanan, driving for 10 years, Zarqa

“women, because they are more careful. Men tend to take more risks than women.”

Siham, driving for 2 years, Mafraq

“women, for a simple reason, in Mafraq, people to tend to ignore the road rules and laws. Women are more careful because they tend to be more fearful than men, so they need to be more careful. Therefore better drivers.”

Samer, driving for one year, Amman

“It is men of course, and if there are more accidents or mistakes by men. It is because the number of male drivers is much much higher than women. So proportionally, the number is higher”

Rami, driving for 10 years, Amman

“1000000% men! As a matter of fact, I am one of those who find myself cursing the person who gave a woman her license! Women think they own the street, they are slow, they don’t respect the rules.. they don’t use flash or indicators. Men might do the same, but we know what we are doing… women on the other hand are just confused!”