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Is there anything to the stereotype about women and backseat driving? I had not given the issue much thought until I read this in the Babylon Bee:
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https://babylonbee.com/news/look-out-shouts-female-astronaut-as-orion-gets-within-5000-miles-of-moon
When I read this article, I was immediately reminded of both my mother and my ex-wife. Despite many polite and gentle reminders that unsolicited advice on the road is generally distracting and unhelpful, neither of them are that great at resisting the urge to backseat drive.
Is backseat driving really a gendered issue? And if so, what is it about female psychology which makes this so common among women? Perhaps it's just more common for couples to go places with the man driving; that if women were driving it would be men who are stereotypical backseat drivers. From personal experience, I can say that neither my father nor myself do much in the way of backseat driving.
I am asking this question in the culture war thread because female nature is a culture war issue; there is a societal taboo against putting women as a group in a negative light. I am interested in peoples' thoughts independent of the taboo.
One time I legitimately saved the lives of my whole family on a long trip.
We were on a highway in the mountains of Oregon, there was a "Lane Ends" sign my husband didn't notice. I saw our lane was ending and there was another car in the lane we needed to get to. I held in my, "look!" until what I thought was the last second. But it really did seem like my husband wasn't paying attention and was either going to drive us off a cliff or hit the other car.
So I spoke up, my husband braked enough that the other car got ahead, we moved behind them, and we survived. My husband confirmed that he hadn't noticed what was going on, vindicating my speaking out. We took it as a signal to stop for a rest and swap drivers.
For this one single useful time I actually possibly saved my children's lives, there have been about 100 other times where he was perfectly in control of the situation and all I did was annoy him, cause him to brake unnecessarily, etc.
I realize I'm not really good at this. A 1% effectiveness rate is very dismal. But! Considering the costs of not speaking up the one time when you really could have prevented an accident, it's better to be oversensitive than under-sensitive here.
I think men are more likely to get into deadly accidents while women are more likely to get into fender benders? That might tip the scales somewhat, a man's fight or flight instinct doesn't go into overdrive when their woman looks like she's about to side swipe that parked car at the grocery. A woman's instinct kicks in when all parties are driving 75mph.
Accidental double post
Thanks, I deleted the other one.
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