It’s really a rhetorical question but in the most recent piece of newsprint to pass as journalism in the Al-Ghad newspaper, Wafa Abu Taha claims that women are more responsible drivers and cause less accidents in Jordan. The article was very interesting. No, wait, that other thing: tedious.
She backs this up with scientific evidence that includes a psychology dictionary definition that claims, and I quote: “a woman is by nature calmer than a man, which causes her to be a calmer driver.”
She claims that men are by nature more inclined to be daredevils and take risks when driving, which of course are the causes of accidents. Women on the other hand have the mental capability of forethought which allows them to see the whole board and make calculations to maintain their safety.
She then dives into more psychobabble of how the left and right side of the male brain work to force us to break traffic laws. To back this up she gets a man named Ibrahim to confess (maybe under torture) that he doesn’t wear his seatbelt some times.
This is followed by an American study that claims American men cause more accidents than American women, and she then says Jordanian statistics back up this study. Get it? Jordanian stats say that men were the cause of 145,926 accidents compared to women who caused 10,683 2 years ago.
I wonder what the ratio of men who drive is to women who drive? I mean the author of this article could’ve easily supported her claim by providing Saudi statistics which indicate astonishingly that 100% of accidents caused in Saudi Arabia are caused by men.
Anyways, this is just a blog entry, a far cry from anything with a sense of journalistic integrity. I have no statistics and I don’t believe any can accurately be provided to support any claim of any nature unless it is based on an extensive study that includes demographics and driving patterns.
However based purely on this blogger’s observations I have to say that women are worse drivers than men in Jordan. This doesn’t mean men are great drivers, it’s just that women are worse. Maybe worse by like a hair.
Or to put this in another way…
The ratio of woman drivers who end up pissing me off on an average outing tends to be higher than the ratio of male drivers who end up pissing me off on an average outing.
Also the level of frustration I feel on an average encounter with a bad driver tends to be higher when it’s a woman.
Here’s the kicker, when a driver within my line of vision or circle of physical influence if you will, makes a shitty move and I can’t see who the driver is, the first thing I say to myself is: ‘it’s gotta be a woman driving’. 99.99% of the time I’m right and you really can’t get more accurate statistics than that to support your claim.
But just in case you doubt me or my numbers, 98% of the time a friend of mine is in the car with me and witnesses a shitty move on a nearby driver and says out loud ‘it’s gotta be a woman’, 98% of the time those people are right too.
Related:
Fellow Jordanian blogger Lubna has her own interesting perspective.
Woooo, Nas, watch it, dude. 🙂 200% of the time I get angry on the road it is a man! Men here make me drive like a guy, too. Mean.
Its all in the numbers in the US…look at the cost of insuring a`man! One reason women are bad drivers in Jordan: the men teach them how!!
I can’t believe this lady beat me to writing about this, I’m typing it as we speak. Another article idea down the tubes. 🙁
Sounds to me like your the one with the problem. Don’t you have a master’s in the social sciences field or something? And your thesis is “Men are better drivers than woman, that’s what me and my friend see it.” Well, bravo.
Actually, men have the “Good driving” gene, that’s why they cause less accidents than women. Also, women are worse drivers because their brain waves get diverted according to the moon’s gravitational field, so they forget how to drive sometimes while their on the road. So you’re right that it’s not only in your own personal perspective that women are yet again inferior to men by nature. And except when the planets are aligned in a certain way which is only once a year, they are also terrible with directions but God help those weak souls, they do try.
loool ofcourse i wont agree with you, although i enjoyed so much how you typed the artical with all the claimings and the torture part,
some drivers are good and some are very bad whether they are a male or female, but when a woman dose a stunt they say “look sho 7mara she dont know how to drive” but if a guy dose the same thing they might say….” had majnoon” or nothing at all
anyway i consider my self a very good driver
Might want to check this:
http://xlubnax.blogspot.com/2007/02/nas-are-jordanian-women-worse-drivers.html#comments
katabtelak post reply:D
visit me
kinzi, i guess it’s all about who’s in the drivers’ seat.
I have to agree that women are bad drivers. I grew up with my mom driving me around and had a number of near death experiences…the reason why they are NEAR death is not because she is amazing at driving a car out from the jaws of death, but because she will stop and scream scaring death away. For example my mom stops and screams “ya yassou3 or ya 3athra” when she doesn’t clutch all the way and tries to shift causing that “scary noise” to come out.
Many women are bad drivers because they are not confident in their knowledge about the mechanical object they drive, or they don’t follow traffic rules (actually no one in jordan does). most are at one of two extremes..the very scared too cauctious drivers or the psychoticly recless ones.
lksfadljk: the sarcastic tone of your comment is confusing as it indicates to me that you might not have gotten the sarcastic tone of my post!
but God bless you…i know how you try 😀
Hi Nas,
of course you are confused, I do not blame you. It is not easy to understand a women’s perspective in post-colonial society without actually living the experience. But the least you can do is not to make the people you oppress as the butt of your jokes, even if you think you are helping their cause.
Germans shouldn’t publically make fun of massacring Jews. Men shouldn’t publically make fun of women drivers. Ironically, sarcastically or however else.
lksfadljk: well first of all i dont oppress anyone. second of all it’s not a joke, it’s an observation. and third of all, comparing my comments on how women drive to German’s making fun of the holocaust is just plain wrong.