Certainly true, in my experience, but I hate it when anyone else is driving--makes me very nervous.

I did 99% of the long distance driving when I was married to my ex-wife, and it drove me crazy. She was a very poor and very nervous highway driver. When we were taking long distance trips I would want to switch up, so that I could do some reading or rest - but she insisted that I *not* read or sleep, and that I keep her company and keep her alert while she drove - which essentially defeated the whole point of switching up; I mean, it was much more harrowing to have her drive (her speeds would alternate between 80 - 115 km/h, this being Canada) and we would get there a lot later with a lot more acrimony, so I would end up doing all the driving, which is what she (not I) wanted anyway.

Did I mention that she was passive aggressive?

My con law professor, the philosopher George Anastaplo, used to use this as an example of the persistance of gender roles even among those bound and determined to discard them.

I have have a lot of automotive experience, truck driving, etc., and am comfortable doing all the driving. But I've often wished my wife would drive more, because I enjoy looking out the window and not concentrating. She would rather I drive, unless I'm really distracted and not feeling well, and claims to be much less comfortable driving, where it doesn't bother me much, which is true, or seems to be.

Not true in my experience.

Not true in my experience.

Meaning what? You let other people drive? (Okay.) Or you haven't noticed that men do all the driving? (Liar.)

My mother was a much better driver than my father

What do you base this on? Not saying it isn't true, I'm just not sure how I'd make any such judgment about my parents. I tend to do the lion's share of the driving, but that's mostly because I really like driving and Roberta prefers to read and sleep in the car.

I'm with Ogged but I've learned to relax unless I see something really bad about to happen. Closing my eyes takes care of much of that.

Generally it's situational and who drives depends on who knows where the place is, who has more familiarity with the type of rented vehicle, who is more comfortable driving in rain, and so on.

Body count, apo. How do you measure?

Also.

1 sums up Buck -- part of the reason I don't fight about it is that he's nervous as a cat when I drive, and his nervousness wears me out, and can't be fun for him. (Obviously, there's no way for me to establish that the nervousness is unjustified, but the reaction of other passengers when I drive supports that claim.)

I always drive when my wife and I are in the car, but, like Ogged in 1, I always prefer to drive no matter what.

I have this perception that my wife is not a good driver (I often find myself clenching my fist and gasping, "careful!") but I have no idea if I'm right or if she feels the same way about me.

Apparently, pwned by 9.

Here's a data point for shared driving. Who drives pretty much correlates to whose (?) car we're taking. Also, Kevin's not real comfortable driving a standard (my car), so that's a reason for him not to drive that car so much. Now, which car we take depends on who feels like driving, maybe one of us already drove through horrendous traffic that day, which car's not plowed in, etc. We do switch off on long trips, but he can drive much longer stretches than I bc I tend to get all glassy-eyed and sleepy fairly quickly.

I had a very annoying driving habit for a while: I'd rely on my passengers to help me drive. I'd yap, get distracted, expect passengers to spot turns, etc. I think it was bc I learned to drive a little late in life (25) and figured everyone else was a better driver anyway so I'd defer to them, as if they shoudl really be driving, not me. Unconscious, but I'm sure it was quite annoying to passengers.

6: Mom actively enjoyed it, and could consistently go a steady 5-10 mph faster than traffic without ever doing anything that would annoy another driver -- she was just always in the lane that was moving, always the one who could see the space, but never made another car react to her (past tense because at almost 70, she's lost a step. She's still competent, but she's ordinary now). Dad, while perfectly competent, doesn't like driving, and is the sort of annoying person who drives exactly the speed limit while every other car on the road passes him.

Or you haven't noticed that men do all the driving? (Liar.)

Option three: men don't do all the driving. Maybe the majority, though; I'd have to think about that.

I do all the driving. Up until recently we had a large unwieldy car which she hated driving and, additionally, she's not overly confident driving on roads she doesn't know and since almost all of our driving is on roads we don't know (locally we use bikes or public transport) ...

My wife is, I think, a physically better driver* than me but there's no doubt I'm the one most confident with navigating, dealing with busy traffic or lengthy stressful drives on unknown roads.

When we were first dating it was the other way around -- she did all the driving. For exactly the same reasons as above -- it was a small car she liked driving and all the driving was on roads she knew.

* -- in the sense of raw ability to handle a car at speed. I usually drive like a sensible boring old man. I'm sure if we had a race on a track, I'd lose.

the sort of annoying person who drives exactly the speed limit while every other car on the road passes him

I must be descending into old-fogeytude. That seems like a good driver to me.

drives exactly the speed limit while every other car on the road passes him

There you have it. Mom wins.

JM, I'll do the driving if we ever road trip together.

LB is right.

Other specific instances of this general phenomenon:

1) Riding pillion on a motorcycle. All the worse (for the men) because it's more easily visible to others than being in a car. The general culture of motorcyclists heightens the gender element too.

2) Riding on a tandem. I have literally never seen (and for the past year or two I've kept an eye out for counterexamples) a man and a woman on a tandem where the woman is steering and the man is the stoker. (Where I live there are a lot of cyclists and a lot more tandems than average, too.)

Both the tandem case and and car-driving case also have easily-available counter-rationales that are consistent with gender stereotypes. For tandems, the stoker is doing a lot of the work and the man is typically stronger. And for driving (esp. over long distances) men in other circumstances flatter themselves that they are better map-readers, etc, so why shouldn't they naturally be the navigator, with the map, issuing orders? But of course these rationales are never availed of, because in the end the control issue (or at a minimum signalling who is really in charge) is more important.

Just to add a bit more: I don't like being a passenger because I can't turn off the driving brain, so there's always a grating difference between what I think the car ought to be doing and what the driver actually is doing, even when the difference has nothing to do with safety or competence (both my ex and exbeforelast are excellent drivers). Luckily, they were also much MUCH better navigators than I am, so it worked to have me drive and them read a map.

My parents pretty much broke it down as who got to the car first was the driver. I don't recall my father or my mother driving more than the other, otherwise, but perhaps my memory is faulty; I recall that if they both get to the car at the same time they just ask which one wants to drive the most. They're both skilled drivers and both really enjoy driving. To some degree I think my mother's desire to drive as much as my dad stems from her own mother's refusal to drive, however. My grandmother actually quit driving in her 30's (there is a long bit of family lore to this from which I spare the rest of you) and never drove again for the rest of her life.

In our house I do most of the driving just because I really love to drive and I am a terrible passenger. I also have a thing about not letting other people drive my car. The only times anyone else has driven my car in the last, oh, ten years or so have been times when I was, for instance, heavily medicated and couldn't drive.

who drives really does seem to be a very sex-determined thing

It certanly can be. My first wife taught me to drive, and except for having a tendancy to drive way to fast on city streets, she was an excellent driver, yet once I became a confident driver, I did most of the driving. I drive when I am with my current wife, but her ample supply of traffic tickets and the number of dents she has put in the car establish that she is really is a pretty crummy driver (who did not learn to drive until she was in her 30's).

Maybe part of the reason for the persistence of the gender role is that for whatever reason (including the gender roles) men tend to be the more experienced driver in most couples, and thus do most of the driving--which, of course, perpetuates things.

The more important consideration is whether the driver or the shotgun passenger gets to control the CD player.

Also true for my marriage, but my wife never even owned a car before our marriage whereas I'm a stereotypical driving-loving guy, so it's a pretty logical division. Furthermore, for the first 4 1/2 years of our relationship, she wasn't really comfortable driving stick (she knew how, but wasn't very good, plus my car for the first year had a tendency to stall during shifts, which freaked her out). Finally, I'd lived in Pittsburgh for 8 more years, and had (still have) a much better idea of how to get around.

That said, it's not clear why the pattern persists. I enjoy being a passenger, and she likes driving. But once the pattern is set.... Part of it may be that, while there are fairly often trips where she'd rather not drive due to fatigue or infamiliarity, I'm always happy to drive.

I don't like being a passenger because I can't turn off the driving brain

I bet you could if you practiced.

20: Get out of my brain!

Do you find yourself pressing your foot into the floor when you think the driver ought to be braking?

Makes up for women doing more housework, I suppose. Driving's work.

16-18: Surely you're joking. I'm a conservative driver, but in heavy traffic, if you're driving at a significantly different speed than the rest of traffic, you're a hazard. Dad going 55 while cars going 65 swerve around him is much likelier to cause an accident than he would if he sped up ten miles an hour. (Socially, I think that if there's a speed limit, it should be enforced -- the risk of getting a ticket if you speed at all should be high enough that in a 55mph zone, traffic would actually move at 55. But that's not the world we live in.)

Makes up for women doing more housework, I suppose. Driving's work. That's why you have to pay people to do it.

26: Buck?

Socially, I think that if there's a speed limit, it should be enforced -- the risk of getting a ticket if you speed at all should be high enough that in a 55mph zone, traffic would actually move at 55.

OK, so you're insane. Buck should be doing all of the driving.

13: I drive pretty much like your mom used to. I like having space around me and knowing who's where.

Let's see here...on trips my dad usually did about 2/3 of the driving, and he was a better driver (did not go slower than the prevailing speed; and did not constantly forget to signal before turning or changing lanes), so there you go. No unfairness there.

I don't know, LB. Puttering along calmly seems about right to me. (Mind you, I haven't touched a steering wheel in about a year and a half and haven't driven regularly since 1999.)

I quite like being a passenger and have no problem with being driven -- by anyone (male or female).

Throughout most of my 20s I didn't drive -- I didn't drive often enough to be particular confident or good at it -- and my then-girlfriends did all the driving.

Idealist is right about the self-perpetuating thing, though. The more I drive now the greater the disparity in familiarity with the car, local and regional roads, etc between me and my wife and the less likely she is to want to drive regularly.

26: In my family we call that the "ghost" brake.

Do you find yourself pressing your foot into the floor when you think the driver ought to be braking?

This I don't do; I just keep my stomach in knots.

31: If the speed limit's too slow, set it higher -- there's some reasonable limit that actually works for the road. Then enforce that. The present system, where everyone on the road except Dad is breaking the law, is nuts.

I agree with LB in 28, with the caveat that if the speed limit is actually to be enforced it should match the prevailing speed, therefore being about 10 mph higher than it is now everywhere except in places with a lot of stop signs, where it would be about 5 mph higher than it is now.

And growing up, it wasn't an issue. We didn't own a car.

My dad is, however, by far the better driver -- he used to be an ambulance driver and has done all those 'drive a 2 ton vehicle at 120mph on ice' type driving courses -- but he hasn't owned a car since he was 21.

19: strikes me as very true.

we live in the city so we don't own a car, but when we rent a car for roadtrips i do all the driving because i have 12x more experience driving, and he's the better map reader. even so, i used to get excessive amounts of backseat-driving - including abrupt loud startling comments -- until we had that conversation where i explained that, in fact, if you can see it i probably have seen it too, and it is very distracting and unsafe to hear comments all the time. i am a perfectly safe driver on my own, as many passengers will attest, but if you make me nervous or distracted i will be a worse one.

things improved a lot after that.

i read it as a control-issue: even though it really did not make sense for him to be behind the wheel, it still bothered him and he compensated by trying to telling me how to drive in all its minutia.

Idealist is right about the self-perpetuating thing, though. The more I drive now the greater the disparity in familiarity with the car, local and regional roads, etc between me and my wife and the less likely she is to want to drive regularly.

Yeah. This may be one where the effect exists at all because of sexism, but it shows up so strongly because it's not important enough to fight about, and once you get into a pattern where one partner is the driver and the other isn't it tends to solidify.

I was going to include 20 in my 24 (didn't see it before I posted). I'm a pretty aggressive driver, so it drives me nuts to see my wife fail to zip through a yellow (OK, a red). But I think this is an effect, not a cause. If I drive, we get there faster.

That said, I think that the various "I'm a bad passenger" comments are really lame excuses for what is really a male/female control situation. How many of you insist on driving when it's you and another guy? I had a boss who was an insanely controlling driver, and wouldn't let anyone else take the wheel even when he was strung out and exhausted (he'd let us use his car, just not when he was in it). But I think that, for many guys, the key time to control the driving is when the alternate is a woman driver.

Of course, if the alternate is Jackmormon, then you're right.

My wife's family was involved in a months long argument over whether her grandfather should be allowed to drive from Indiana to Florida, given that he is in his eighties. The alternative would be to fly down, which would be expensive. The argument had been going on for quite some time before I found out that his wife, who is only in her sixties, *was going to be in the car with him for the whole trip.* Being in a car that his wife drove was simply not an option, though. He either flew or drove himself.

I made some noises about driving my gf's car because I miss driving. She mistook this as my saying that I ought to be the one driving and didn't take too kindly to it. I don't care one way or the other, but I do like driving and miss it (no car).

41: Yep. Dad nearly got us killed once backseat driving my sister -- he snapped out an order to make a turn she was about to miss, when she'd really already almost missed it and she reacted without thinking by turning the car 90 degrees going 50 -- it wasn't up on two wheels, but close. (She's generally a very good driver -- much better than I am -- but the hardwired 'Do what Dad says, when he says it' reaction took over.)

I do 95 percent of the driving. I hate being the passenger. I prefer driving no matter the gender of the other person.

But my gf is an amazing parallel parker. Simply amazing what she can do in small spaces.

People drive the design speed for a road - this has been shown in traffic studies. However, for various reasons, speed limits are not set to coordinate with design speeds. It would be perverse, even cruel, to rigidly enforce a speed limit that is counter to how sensible drivers drive.

It's a good thing we're not allowed to use analogies, because I'm struggling to come up with one. Thanks, O.

I don't get the hating being a passenger thing. Obviously it's a control gene that I lack. I genuinely don't mind being in the passenger seat at all.

[I do like to control the CD player though]

38: Does anyone know whether there is purposeful psychology going on with speed limits? Are they actually designed with a "well, data shows that people are going to always go X above the limit, so let's set the limit in accordance with that expectation".

As for the rest of the discussion, is the gender role we're assuming is in play that "men must drive their women around" or simply that "men enjoy driving more than women"?

I do like to control the CD player though

This, yes.

Jackmormon, you're crazy.

Oh, and my mom was plainly the better driver - she drove and repaired sports cars when she was young - but Dad drove on road trips - Mom hated driving for more than an hour at a time. I can't recall who drove around town when it was the two of them, but I suspect my dad did. When I went to college, my mom got a sports car again, and I'm pretty sure my dad never drove that.

In regards to the red/yellow thing: while I'm generally a more aggressive (that is, fast) driver than my wife, I drive her crazy in my response to yellow lights. As she put it, "most people will go through the light if they can; you'll stop if you can."

Also, she's constantly nagging me to up-shift.

[I do like to control the CD player though]

Huh, I always cede control of the music (and navigation) to the passenger.

That's a good question. My guess is that it's the first rather than the second, but that's from looking at my parents and at my own marriage -- Mom loved driving, Dad didn't, but Dad drove, and I push to drive more because having learned late I feel like I need the practice, but I'd have to get seriously hostile to get to drive with Buck in the car, and it doesn't seem like a big enough issue to fight about. So, two anecdotes where the man drives despite pressure from the woman to get to drive more.

This reminds me of a comment my ex-GF made years ago when we were in Santa Barbara for a friend's wedding. We carpooled from the hotel to the church, me driving her car, with her in the passenger seat and two friends in the back. One of my friends asked my ex, if this is your car, why is Moira driving? Ex-GF: Because she's the butch.

The fact of that never occurred to me as being a factor - I'm probably more like Ogged: I have a hard time turning off the 'driving brain.' That, and maybe it's because in my family, the driving's always been pretty evenly split between my folks, and since I was old enough to drive, my father was happy to have me take over his duties. An excellent driver, he'd rather look out the window.

Downside to me doing all the driving is that I focus so much on driving that I do a bad job of listening to conversations. I can't tell you how many arguments I've wandered into while driving, simply because I wasn't paying attention to the conversation but - ahem - watching the road.

I wonder if the youngish people who simply must drive will grow up to be the 80 year old who won't give up driving. Perhaps bc I was late to driving, I'm not really caught up in the independence of driving. I also don't mind public transportation; lets me read, knit, veg out, etc.. I expect I'll happily board the senior citizen van when the time comes. That's what I say now; we'll see what actually happens.

54: On this one, you're right.

I'm a counterexample to the general claim here: I much prefer to have my wife drive, going so far as to whine a bit when she doesn't. (We don't own a car, but whenever we come into possession of one this is the case, and it was too when we did have one.) She's a better driver, and has a better sense of direction than I do. My brother is the same way with his wife. My father finds this absolutely bizarre, since you'd have to pry the wheel from his cold dead hands, etc. etc.

Huh, I always cede control of the music (and navigation) to the passenger.

What? Obviously the driver gets to pick the music.

It's not a control issue for me; I've got a standing offer for her to drive whenever she wants, and I often ask her, and get the response she'd rather I drive, and I wish this were not the case.

I prefer to let my wife drive, in part because she is a better driver most of the time, but mainly because she is a worse passenger. It is much easier to simply let her drive than to have her tell me how to drive.

The big exception is driving in stressful situations, like heavy traffic or a city at night. In those situations Molly gets so worked up that it affects her driving, so she makes me drive.

Ironically, the thing that makes me a bad driver most of the time serves me well in this situation. I'm not always as attentive as I should be. In a stressful situation, my attention rises to the level of a careful, safe driver. Molly, on the other hand, is always attentive and thus becomes jumpy and hyper vigilant when stressed.

50.1: See 48. But note that, when a highway has a big bend, making a design speed of 55, the speed limit drops to 45 (or at least there are big yellow 45 MPH signs). So I think that there is a ~10 MPH speeding presumption. I wonder: is this a US/NA thing?

50.2: Actually, I think it's Option C, Men don't let their womenfolk drive them around. The "like driving more" is half-true, half-excuse, and I don't think the chauffeur idea plays a role at all.

Jeez. Stand up for the law around here and suddenly you're a poster girl for bad driving.

I mean, it's important to create a driver-friendly environment, and who knows what kind of shit the passengers are going to play? Now, if you know that your passengers have decent taste, you can cede control, but this is obviously a special case.

re: 61

No, obviously the person with the best* taste in music gets to pick. And since in any car containing me...

* or least shit

My girlfriend and I are equally good drivers, and equally experienced, but she prefers to drive and I prefer to let her. To the best of my knowledge, we are the only heterosexual couple I've ever known in which this is the case, including every 'gender progressive' couple i've ever known.

Why do we do it this way (though the real question should be why do so few other couples)? Dunno. She's more aggressive than me, in general, but I'm more active and energetic than her, so I don't think it's about me wanting to be passive and her wanting to be doing something. I think it's just that she likes to drive and I really could care less - and don't feel any subconscious need to show that I'm better than her at it or in control of things or something. And for her part, she feels no need to indicate that I'm in control.

Why don't other couples do it like this? maybe it's kinda like how little kids play: when it's just girls, they play girl games; when it's jsut boys, they play boy games; when it's boys and girls, they play boy games.

59: Woohoo!

Molly sounds like my mom. She's a pretty good driver, though sometimes a bit too cautious. If she's stressed though, she becomes overly cautious, to the point of being paradoxically dangerous.

(My brother and I joke that her peripheral vision is TOO good, as she reacts to cars changing lanes. One state over.)

65: Actually, not driving the speed limit is the counterargument I always use against anti-immigration assholes who squeal "but they're breaking the law," as if the speaker has never gone 1 MPH over the limit.

So why does JM hate Mexicans?

I hate being the passenger. I prefer driving no matter the gender of the other person.

Naturalizing the preference isn't explanatory. Saying "I'm a bad passenger" is really just saying "I want to be in control of the driving." But that's what we want to explain.Cross-classify the power of people we drive with (e.g., boss or boss's boss or what have you) and the gender of those people. When are people likely to assert their desire to drive? When does the power effect trump the gender effect, both for actually driving and for stuff like back-seat driving? The relationships could be complex. E.g., are men more likely to be made less nervous being driven around by men with more power than them but more nervous with equivalently powerful women, etc. You could do some experiments.

Idealist is right about the self-perpetuating thing, though. The more I drive now the greater the disparity in familiarity with the car, local and regional roads, etc between me and my wife and the less likely she is to want to drive regularly.

Sadly this sort of thing is true of more important things, too, such as childcare. Gendered competence/incompetence.

Now that I'm really thinking about it, I used to drive often because I'm absolutely useless as a navigator. In fact in college, back when I played video games and we'd sometimes do this as a group, I'd be controlling the Resident Evil guy while someone who liked navigating better than playing would tell me where to go and what to do. I make up for it with my road mix tapes?

26: YES.

I won't say which of us is the better driver, but my wife is certainly a more aggressive and confident driver than I am. I think she's a little too confident and not concerned enough about the possibility that other drivers are raging omnicidal idiots, but she rightly points out that my overcautious approach has its dangers as well.

Anyway, her high-speed tailgating makes me try to put my foot through the floorboards looking for the passenger's brake.

I think when we're driving together she drives more than 50% of the time, but we certainly don't have a problem sharing driving. It's common for one of us to ask to be the designated drinker, committing the other to driving home, for instance.

re: 73

We don't have kids, but I suspect the competence will very much run counter to the gender norm on that one.

I'm also more often the navigator, though in wife's car, there's a GPS nav system, so navigation duties mostly consist of entering our destination address.

I don't know how much this relates but in many cases, for us anyway, it comes down to who's got the greater tolerance for drinking. We live in SF (for now) and so we rarely drive. When we do, it's usually to meet someone for dinner and drinks, in which case, the GF will drive there (and I will refrain from commenting on her inability to maintain even pressure on the gas), and I will drive back, because unlike her, I can have two glasses of wine over an evening and be stone cold sober, while she is borderline drunk.

My cousin seconded this only Saturday, saying she never drives home from an evening out - her husband always does, regardless of who drove there.

Designated driving! This is the one situation where most guys I know decide that, actually, it is okay for the girlfriend/wife to drive that night.

Yeah, being the (only) regularly driver is something of a pain when it comes to drinking but we drive to the pub so rarely that it's not really an issue.

Huh, I always cede control of the music (and navigation) to the passenger.

That's because you're not a complete barbarian.

are men more likely to be made less nervous being driven around by men with more power than them but more nervous with equivalently powerful women, etc

I'm pretty sure my nervousness correlates with my perception of the competence of the driver. I was as relaxed as I was going to get whent he ex was driving, but get pretty nervous when some of my male relatives are driving. That said, of course I hate all women.

79: Best part of pregnancy - taking a DD with you everywhere you go.

76: we've got one on the way, and I'm very curious to see how things go. The research I've read indicates that even for very progressive couples, maternity leave and long work hours (especially for UK fathers, who work longer than non-fathers and far longer than mothers in all social classes) mean that couples find it very easy to fall into gender norms that they don't agree with. Structurally, everything's pushing that way, and it takes lots of time and energy (when you are most time- and energy-poor) to avoid slipping into traditional childcare norms.

Agree about designated; I always drink more, and therefore she expects to drive home from parties.
This is a pattern I'd be happy to change, yet she insists that while she's good, I'm both better and less stressed. And there are roads, including major interstates, where the thought of driving distresses her.

I'm working at a site at the moment about an hour from home by tollways. She was very apprehensive about my taking the job, because were it her, she'd find the drive too stressful, where it seems not to bother me.

Yes, maybe this is when it starts: nine months (more, with the breastfeeding) of the woman hardly drinking. It sets a pattern that I would be more than happy to capitalise on. If only we had a car...

I am an adequate driver but I don't like to. When I pick my sister up at work (in her car) she takes over driving when I get there. I also have been driven to Fargo (!) by my lovely 30-y.-o. niece.

Of course, were it not for incest taboos, I would insist on proving my virility by doing the driving.

I have read that the fact that women tend to be less experienced drivers is balanced by the fact that they're less aggressive and histrionic in their driving. All this probably means is that the worst drivers of all are high-testosterone morons.

re: 84

My wife works longer hours than me and is both 'management' and more highly paid. So, in that respect, the gender roles are slightly reversed. Also, I have a much younger sibling, so am well used to nappy changing and the like and am quite chilled out around small/badly-behaved children. My wife has a much lower tolerance towards kids than I do.

Of course, that all might change if/when we have kids and I'll morph into 'Victorian dad'.

Best part of pregnancy - taking a DD with you everywhere you go.

True dat. This time, apostropher is the wino!

re: 84 And congratulations on the impending sprog...

Who would of think it. JM the goodie-goodie, LB the scofflaw malefactor making excuses for lawbreakers.

"thunk"

When are people likely to assert their desire to drive?

We should talk more about this, because there's always an undercurrent of tension when friends and I have to decide who gets to drive. Sometimes circumstances answer the question for us, but when not, it's always pretty obvious that the ones not doing the driving are making a concession. (This could all be in my head.)

84: For infant care, breastfeeding is a problem in this regard (oh, not a big enough problem not to do it, but a problem). We breastfed pretty much exclusively (a bottle here and there when I was going to be out of pocket, but maybe once a week or so, not more than that) for the first six months. And that meant that whatever care Buck gave, there was one category of problem he couldn't solve, so I got handed the baby whenever she was crying for no explainable reason, because it could have been hunger. This didn't turn into a long-term difference in who gave more child care, because after six months I went back to work long hours while Buck worked at home (we had a full time babysitter, but he was around), but in the absence of that dynamic, I could easily see the breastfeeding effect making the mother into the primary parent long-term.

93: shouldn't it be whoever has the longest cock?

Thickest gets to ride shotgun.

93: Iran is technically in Asia, right? That might explain your friends' reluctance to have you ferry them about.

An anecdote does not contradict data, but I would note that when she was younger, my step-mother was the best driver I knew. She was also one of the most aggressive, in the sense of driving as fast as conditions safely allowed. I mentioned my first wife above. Also an excellent driver, but also the one who taught me how to drive very fast on curvy mountain roads.

95: I can't sit in both seats at once, reuben.

Of course, were it not for incest taboos, I would insist on proving my virility by doing the driving.

Let's not overthink things here.

We should talk more about this, because there's always an undercurrent of tension when friends and I have to decide who gets to drive. Sometimes circumstances answer the question for us, but when not, it's always pretty obvious that the ones not doing the driving are making a concession. (This could all be in my head.)

I don't know about that so much, it seems like driving is the boring chore when you're in a car with multiple friends. But then again I'm more of a rowdy teen than you are.

If there are 4 or more people it generally gets decided that the two largest people are in the front. Women get screwed again, by the cold hand of logic!

90: cheers

98: then clearly your cock is smaller than mine.

My mother was a very anxious driver. Her driving made her nervous and it made all the rest of us nervous. She was pretty safe, but she just wasn't comfortable making decisions quickly. When my dad was around he always drove. It took about six months after I started driving for me to drive any time my dad wasn't around. And it was so much more pleasant for my mother and I.

My girlfriend doesn't like to drive because she doesn't do so often. I don't do so very often either, but I do at least every six months or so, and I feel pretty confident driving when I haven't for a while. So I drive.

I wonder to what extent the gender difference is being caused by different levels of irrational confidence. The problem in both of the above cases isn't who can drive, it's who feels comfortable and confident about driving.

94: For this progressive couple, breastfeeding actually promoted fatherhood responsibility: if she was feeding at all hours, plus getting up at 6 am to pump, she sure as hell wasn't going to be responsible for even half of the remainder of care, especially not the gruelling 2 am squalls. Even if nursing was the answer, I carried Daughter to and fro.

I guess you're driving, then.

104->101.

I wonder to what extent the gender difference is being caused by different levels of irrational confidence. The problem in both of the above cases isn't who can drive, it's who feels comfortable and confident about driving.

It took us 102 comments for someone to realize this?

[Hangs head in shame]

93: Cocks aside, shouldn't it be either baddest-ass car or most-accommodating?

Or are we talking about 4 guys with Accord sedans? Beige.

Kieran gets it right. It's not that the man who wants to drive thinks his wife or girlfriend can't drive, it's that he has a hard time giving up control over the car, and *that's* what's the gender-linked preference is.

As a possible counterargument, though: whose more nervous in the passenger seat? A boyfriend or husband, or a mother?

I honestly hadn't given this a whole lot of thought. I don't own a car. Shivbunny does, and he hates driving and prefers being a passenger; but when we're in Canada, he knows the roads and I don't. When we rented a car in the U.S. for a short roadtrip, I drove. "But we're in Canada" explanation is really just a stupid rationalization, though, because since I don't own a car 95% of my driving is a) rental cars in b) cities I don't know on b) unfamiliar highways at a gazillion miles an hour.

90: Likewise. It's a fertile blog this year, with the new apostrolet and whatever a baby Chopper is (Moped? Paring knife).

57: I can't tell you how many arguments I've wandered into while driving

My ex used to pick the middle of the night in the middle of a decreasing radius turn during the middle of a toad-strangler pre-tornado T-storm to say "We need to talk...". Just another one of the reasons she's an ex.

Get back here, 'whose.' [reels it in.] 'who's'

Accord sedans

Don't knock it.

"toad-strangler"?

102: I wonder to what extent the gender difference is being caused by different levels of irrational confidence.

Yes!

103: This sounds like an excellent approach.

Don't knock it.

I knew it!

I hate driving, don't own a car, and try to avoid it when possible.

For my parents who drove depended on which car they took.

I knew it!

I have mentioned it recently.

114: I've seen this as an explanation for a whole lot of gender differences, from sports to power-tool usage and so forth. Boys get the socialization to butch up and not show fear even around situations that are rationally scary, while girls are encouraged and supported in not being pressured to do anything they're reluctant to do. While the latter seems like generally a kinder and more reasonable way to treat children, it means that boys end up getting their hands on, say, a circular saw and getting comfortable with using it a whole lot earlier than girls do.

This sounds like an excellent approach.

You won't be thanking me at 4 am, I assure you. When we talk to prospective parents, I always say, "The first 4 weeks are really tough, but then it settles down," and my wife says, "I never noticed that." Because she wasn't walking around with a crying newborn for, no shit, 90 minutes the middle of one night (if I stopped walking, then the screaming really began). Not that she had it easy - it's just a different kind of hard. Which is why it's really good for the relationship - mutual misery, no resentment. Woo-hoo!

I have mentioned it recently.

I thought so, but I wasn't going to search.

But is it beige?

Black, naturally.

My wife is a good driver, and parallel parker, so she usually drives. She also drives around alot during the day so she knows all the short cuts. I am pretty spacey so I doesn't bother me not to drive.

118: Along with that, I think there's a lot more shaming of boys for lack of competance. You learn quickly to become competant at things on your own time and to avoid doing anything badly in public. No one cares if a woman is terrible at pick-up soccer if she's willing to actually play, whereas a guy would get ragged on. On the flip side, although women are forgiven when they are incompetant, women are often just assumed to be incompetant.

113: Toad-strangler: A rain storm so heavy a toad would drown in it. I never heard that in NY but it was a common phrase in Alabama (as were T-storms with seriously insane inch/hour rates).

119: You won't be thanking me at 4 am, I assure you.

I expect not. But maybe a few years later when I don't feel like sideline dad, having to take cues and direction from my girlfriend. Not that my motivaes are honourable: my girlfriend's a complete know-it-all, and I can't bear to give her the satisfaction of her being better at this parenting thing as she is. Spite and envy - that's what it comes down to.

Baby is due two weeks before I hand in my master's thesis. I really need to get that thing done sooner.

We split, but not totally evenly. I drive somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 the time, probably closer to 1/3. He can go a bit longer without taking a break, and is better in really hairy big city driving and at parallel parking. Both of us are competent but I'm not agressive enough when it comes to, e.g., traffic circles or suddenly having to get over three lanes at once in heavy and fast-moving traffic. But both of us would just as soon be the passenger, so we make a conscious effort to split it.

'than I am', rather than 'as she is'.

Baby is due two weeks before I hand in my master's thesis. I really need to get that thing done sooner.

You cannot conceive how important this is. I actually had some work-related stuff I had to take care of in the first 2 weeks (I took a semi-leave), but I was good for maybe 4 hours every other day.

Thanks 124, I was 3/4 of the way to a folk etymology involving air being sucked away from the surface of the ground by an intense low-pressure system or something like that.

And, you know? A month early is better than two weeks early. Due dates aren't anything more than guidelines -- the baby is as likely to show up two weeks early as not.

Whimper. We learned about the baby just when I got the sort of fabulous (but very time-consuming) job I went to graduate school to get. Everything's coming up roses, but all at once and six months earlier than planned. Not sure how to fit my last two exams and that thesis into the mix.

Is it too late to switch thesis topics to something you've already written about? Maybe a Five Paragraph Theme on Huck Finn?

Without reading the comments: I've been on lots of long trips with a significant other where I was not driving, or driving much less than half. Also, a lot of times I made her power the rickshaw-- how do we classify cases like that?

131: Seriously, you should plan now to (a) get it done early (b) get a two month or more extension to get you past the intitial emergency, or (c) make sure someone else is available to for babycare and coddling your girlfriend in the first couple of postpartum weeks (have her mother or some other relative come to stay, or hire a doula, or something), and worry about making up for it later. If you're trying to do absorbing and time-sensitive work in the first month after the baby's born, you're not going to successfully pull your weight and you should plan your way around it.

(And I should say that (c) is not an option that makes you a bad person -- Buck was in pretty much that position with our first, and we both stayed with my mother so he could work but I had support. This sucked for him, because she's kind of hostile, but worked out well for me and the baby.)

So my options are: A) befriend LB's semi-hostile mother and try to lure her to London to to help with the baby; B) get the damn thesis done early.

B it is. It's so difficult to work on the thesis on the weekends right now, though, knowing that these are some of the very last peaceful and autonomous weekends I have left.

(All advice handed out on this blog should be taken with the recognition that there's only one person leaving all these comments, typing insanely away in a basement in Kansas somewhere.)

136: Naaaaa. One kid is easy. Just don't make another for a while.

That person has a rich inner life though, if she says so herself.

Pick one weekend to be peaceful and/or autonomous, and spend the rest working your ass off. We had various pre-baby home improvement projects that frequently took up evenings as well as weekends, but the one weekend we went away together made up for all of it.

Also, this: small babies are very portable. Our (modest) social life gradually ramped down from birth; it didn't drop off dramatically (poetry reading when she was a week old, baseball game at 10 days, etc.). Don't fear the cliches of being housebound for 18 years starting at birth. Do fear being a bit stunned for the first few weeks, though.

Wait, does 137 mean I can stop?

thanks for all the advice. i'm off for a stiff drink.

Our (modest) social life gradually ramped down from birth; it didn't drop off dramatically (poetry reading when she was a week old, baseball game at 10 days, etc.).

This is true -- a pre-crawling baby can be hauled around to all sorts of social events. Sally went out with me and some friends for margaritas when she was about eight weeks, and spent a large part of the night being used by Pigeon Boy (a previously referenced friend with an unfortunate habit of cooing like a giant pigeon at sensitive moments) in an attempt to pick up women. ("Look at me with a baby! I'm sensitive!")

Whose idea was that?

Don't fear the cliches of being housebound for 18 years starting at birth.

True. That starts around one year, not birth.

144: He offered to take her for a bit so I could relax -- I didn't realize until later that he was using her to troll for dates. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

We're somewhere around Katherine's situation--a split, but probably more like 2/3 - 1/3 than 50-50. We both generally like to drive and are good at it, but I'm pretty much always happy to drive and sometimes she doesn't want to. I'm generally a good passenger when the driver is competent, but I drive better than most people and so tend to find a lot of other drivers marginally competent.

102/114: I think that confidence, irrational or otherwise, is an actual virtue when driving. There are a lot of decisions - what lane to be in, whether to pass someone, whether to stop at a just-turned-yellow light, and so on, where making a confident, arbitrary decision is much better than nervously trying to figure out what's right. Even in more significant decisions, like trying to determine whether you've reached the right street or exit, it's safer and more predictable for everyone on the road to confidently take the exit or avoid it, even if you're wrong and have to correct later, then it is to dither.

My girlfriend didn't drive for the decade between high school and a couple of years ago. She had had a couple of minor accidents and had not managed to get back on the horse when she needed to. That, coupled with the fact that my car is stick shift, meant that I did all of the driving for the first year we lived together. Always being the designated driver got old pretty quickly.

Now that we're back in the city and neither of us drive regularly, I'm concerned that she doesn't do enough of the rare driving that we do. The self-perpetuating incompetence, while not applying here to driving directly, is definitely applying to city driving, navigation, and parking.

Don't fear the cliches of being housebound for 18 years starting at birth.

In all seriousness, I wish my parents had had a bit more of a social life. The only other adults I had any interaction with were either teachers, church people, or aunts and uncles.

I think that confidence, irrational or otherwise, is an actual virtue when driving.

I think this is right - it terrifies me when I think of my MIL driving, because she's terribly uncertain and indecisive in general, and worse when driving.

And, of course, part of being a successful driver is knowing/anticipating what others will do; a dithering driver is a danger to himself and others, because he's unpredictable.

I'm not sure confidence is the best way to describe this virtue. One should be properly assertive and decisive, but one should definitely not think "oh, I don't need to leave 2-3 seconds between me and the car ahead of me because I'm so quick of reflex."

149: I think it's hugely important for small children to be socialized. Every once in awhile we realize that maybe the others around us are dubious at our kid's presence (she's well-behaved, I swear), but we take her practically everywhere. She fearlessly asks servers for milk or water or bread (she's on a prison diet) at restaurants. Funny thing is, she has a string shy streak, but she spends so much time in restaurants that she's shyer with friends (when they first come over at least) than with strangers when she's out.

Actually, we occasionally realize that we, as a married couple, need to get out without her, because we're so accustomed to - and not stressed about - having her with us.

152: A few years back we took our son, then four, to one of the nicest restaurants in town for a birthday dinner for the two of us (birthdays about a week apart). Major apprehension from the waitstaff on the way in, big smiles on the way out. But long before we got to that point, there were many, many dinners interrupted by taking the kid outside for a minute to talk about what is and isn't appropriate behavior in restaurants. It's not rocket science, but it takes a little work in the early going.

I don't drive the Biophysicist's low-slung car for no other reason than that I cannot see comfortably out the front. I have got used to the jet-fighter manqué driving style he embraces, and rarely have adrenalin rushes anymore. He does have the fastest reaction time of anyone I've ever driven with.

When we take my car, I usually drive, unless one or more parts of me is in a cast/brace/encumbered [tho' I did drive when I was otherwise in a wheelchair, as I knew where we were going, he didn't, and, as my car has an automatic transmission, I didn't need to use my recently refurbished left foot].

The day that we first met in person, I drove the rental vehicle, a 4WD. I offered to let him drive; he declined, on the grounds that I already drove a similar vehicle at home and I had been driving in snow more recently than he. [My first thought: Oooooh, in addition to using the word "yclept" correctly, he doesn't have an unbreakable connection between the steering wheel and his testicles...]

See comment 10, but with gender roles reversed, and that's how we are. But we're outliers, I imagine.

Wife weighing in here: I generously let him drive when he's dropping me off somewhere. The trouble really began when early in our relationship he revealed his "put the clutch in around corners" theory.

152: That's true, but wildly easier with only one kid (Bitch's PK sounds like very much that sort of successfully socialized to grownup situations kid). With two, they play off each other and it's harder to keep them in grownup mode, which means it's much less practical to take them grownup places. (I'd take Sally or Newt -- 7 and 5 -- pretty much anyplace, and trust them to behave themselves in a reasonable and civilized fashion. Sally and Newt much less so.)

156: didnt I say that?

157: Indeed you did. (Although I think you're wrong if you meant that the first month with the first kid was easy. One kid is easier than two, but the first month to six weeks with your first baby is impressively shocking. The second baby is comparatively easy.) (At least, that was how I found it, with two basically easy babies with fairly similar temperaments. I suppose you could start out with a placidly angelic baby and have a younger sibling who was a colicky hellion.)

Some drivers inspire confidence better than others: I'm not sure why this is, and obviously the dynamic also varies according to the passenger. I find I'm comfortable with being driven by about 50% of the people I know. I've never had much of a problem being driven by my partner. Friends are often more problematic: some of them drive like cunts (and no, I'm afraid there really is no other word for it). If it gets really bad, they get warned, then I ask to get out. It's my life they're risking, after all.

There was a slightly droll episode with a friend a few years ago when we rented a car to make a trip. On the way out, he drove. No problem. As we prepared to drive back, I naturally assumed that I would be doing the return leg, so I opened the driver's side door. My friend started to head for the passenger door, then suddenly switched, scuttled around and interposed himself between myself and the steering wheel. Without a word. I took this to be a clear expression of determination - albeit an odd one - so I decided to let it go without a discussion. As it happens, he was an OK driver.

People who hate being driven by anyone - what did you do before you could drive yourself? Was childhood one long terror ride?

The first day home from the hospital is TERRIFYING.

OH MY GOD, what have I done?!?!?!?!!? There is NO way that I am going to survive this ordeal.

When you have number two, you realize that it can get much worse.

I don't like other people driving my car but am mostly fine with being a passenger in other people's cars. This has nothing to do with the sex of the other people. Perhaps the possessiveness towards my car is sex linked though.

161: Do you drive a Mini Cooper or a Ram Pickup?

With two, they play off each other and it's harder to keep them in grownup mode, which means it's much less practical to take them grownup places. (I'd take Sally or Newt -- 7 and 5 -- pretty much anyplace, and trust them to behave themselves in a reasonable and civilized fashion. Sally and Newt much less so.)

This is my only apprehension about having only one kid. It seems selfish and unfair to the kid to have them leashed too tightly to grownup mode.

156: I'll buy easier but might push back a little bit on wildly easier. We've spent a lot of time with our boy plus my sil's two (one same age, one +2), sometimes with her and sometimes without, since all of the boys were pretty small, generally without issues, and there's another set of five cousins who have all been good dinner company since they were small. OTOH, I wouldn't take my brother's three to a cat fight.

I don't think it's entirely training--I believe that some kids are just naturally harder to handle than others--but I also think that an awful lot of parents underestimate how well kids can be taught to behave in public and/or overestimate how willing others are to tolerate their kids misbehavior.

156: To meld the two themes here: That dynamic extends to teen drivers, as well - I noted that my son tended to show off if there was another teen in the car when he was driving. Something about being amongst their own kind that leads them into downward spiralling behaviour...

The Offspring enjoyed restaurants when he was an infant - stuff to look at, waitresses to flirt with, interesting foods to taste. I'd get a couple of ohmygodababy looks when I'd bring him into someplace with cloth napkins, but he would turn on the I'm-so-cute-and-charming thing and they would relax.

The only truly pissed look he ever got was at a Benihana, where they seat unrelated parties at the same table. He distracted the female portion of an obvious date and she spent the rest of the meal cooing at him, rather than paying attention to the guy she was with. Babe magnets, babies are.

Yeah, Mr. B. drives most of the time even though I'm a better driver and I like to drive. I'd say that it's partly because I'm also better at entertaining PK in the car, but Mr. B. did the driving before we had him, so that's not it. The only reason I can think of is that when we started dating, he had a car and I didn't, so he drove most of the time and it became a habit. When we both had cars, I usually drove mine and he usually drove his.

Babe magnets, babies are.

The one time in my life I felt like I might viscerally understand what it's like to be beautiful was walking around on Halloween with a cute 18-month-old in a pumpkin suit on my shoulders.

My parents had a rule, which we hated, but made sense, that we weren't allowed to have friends in the car until we'd had our license a year.

If you think one or two kids out at dinner is fun, try four.

148: I can achieve the correct level of assertiveness in driving, sometimes.

In pouring rain last month, I checked the lane to my left, verified space for me to change lanes safely, signalled, began the lane change... and jerked back the wheel as a motorcyclist decided to go from lanesplitting on my right to blasting into the space I was about to shift into.

A year and a half ago, I confidently drove through a T-intersection in my residential neighborhood, knowing that I had right of way and that traffic coming from my right was supposed to stop. I was halfway through the intersection when a rusty old moped bearing a large stoned ex-con bounced off my hood.

It seems, sometimes, like my own driving skill has surprisingly little bearing on my safety. So I drive paranoiacally.

"The one time in my life I felt like I might viscerally understand what it's like to be beautiful was walking around on Halloween with a cute 18-month-old in a pumpkin suit on my shoulders"

Was this before or after the 18 month old burped regurgitated milk on to your head?

170: IIRC he'd gotten better about the barfing by then, but there's good reason why he's wearing a bib in pretty much all of his baby pictures.

But he does have some sort of stomach crud now. Nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a kid emptying his stomach contents, or at least the portion that isn't all over his bed, onto the lid of the toilet.

Nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of

...a kid vomiting over the edge of his six-foot bunk bed onto a brick floor. Impressive splatter radius on that.

There is more to parenting than projectile vomiting and blowing diarrhea not just out of a diaper, but out the neckhole of a onesie. There is more, but there are days where you'll question that.

There is more to parenting than projectile vomiting and blowing diarrhea [...] out of a diaper

Also, sometimes your kids get sick, too.

173: Nails it.

I love my daughter. I really do. And autism really isn't the worst thing in the world. But, I did not think I would still be wiping her butt as her 15th birthday approaches. My gf is a saint for helping me.*

*with my daughter's butt, of course, not mine.

Once when I was young, I had a temporary lapse of memory in a tough circumstance, and thought you were supposed to throw up in the sink. Oops.

162

Actually currently a Toyota Celica which is overdue for replacement.

Your gf and you as well. My brother-in-law is pretty much still a toddler at 40, and my inlaws handle him with amazing grace and aplomb. He's a sweet, good kid, but it's still got to be terribly hard on them having had forty years of the sort of care most parents have to do for two or three.

169.--Christ, yes. Riding a motorcycle for any significant period of time makes one a much more careful automobile driver.

Watch out for the motorcyclists, people!

177: Thanks, but she is here voluntarily. That makes her saintly. I am merely dutiful.

172: sounds like you need a better containments strategy. Tighter necks on the onesies?

180: Thankfully, it only happened once, when my oldest was a baby. Unfortunately, while in the car seat in the back of my car on the way to the daycare.

It disturbed me when I learned that my telecommuting coworker who would disappear from the company chat system with "shit. bbl." was referring to the fact that his twins had gotten into the diaper pail.

his twins had gotten into the diaper pail.

Whenever I'm at home reading and Noah suddenly is out of sight and suspiciously quiet, I make a mad dash to the cats' litter box. His fascination with it knows no bounds.

I don't know how to drive at all, and at 36, I feel like I'm kind of too old to learn now.

My ex-husband said he would teach me. When we lived out in St. Louis, we drove to a parking lot (there are lots of those in the suburbs of St. Louis) and he gave me a first lesson, but after that he was too scared to give me lesson number two. "You haven't assimilated the laws of physics! You don't understand that when taking a turn, you're supposed to slow down, not speed up!"

But Megan told me a few months ago that if she had a car, she'd gladly teach me. She's no chicken.

183.--It sounds more like Noah is fascinated with his ability to make you run around and pay attention to him.

I don't know how to drive at all, and at 36, I feel like I'm kind of too old to learn now.

My mom learned to drive stick in her late fifties. (Now she hates driving anything else.) Not quite the same thing, but close enough for govt. work. Your age is no bar.

SCMT: Didn't she feel extremely nervous? The advantage of learning when you're young is that you're much more fearless.

Yeah, I learned solidly at 27 (I got a license at 21, but I probably didn't drive more than a couple of hundred miles lifetime until 27) which isn't meaningfully younger than 36 and I'm fine now. Pay a driving school -- living in the US, it's a really useful thing to know how to do know and then.

Oh, wait, she always drove, but just learned to drive stick in her fifties? I would say that's not the same at all.

Driving is a pretty easy skill to pick up, alif. Particularly an automatic transmission, which is mostly just aiming the front of the car in the direction you want to go.

189: I found driving easier to learn, and less scary, than learning to drive stick; that's why I thought of it. Anyway, the thing to remember is that you're in the car, so if anyone gets killed, it won't be you.

You should learn to drive. I can't recall where you live, but there's a huge difference between learning to drive and learning to drive in NYC (I'm thinking of LB). Learning to drive will take you a long weekend, an open parking lot, and an understanding friend. Getting comfortable driving will take--a guess, from when I was teenager--a couple of months. Learning to drive responsibly--again, from my experience--will take a couple of accidents.

191: I'm not sure that's true. Driving around a parking lot is easy, but driving in the real world isn't just controlling the vehicle but responding to all kinds of cues that tell you what to do with it. I don't have any trouble believing that's a lot harder to pick up after you've spent years as an adult not looking for that stuff. And my dad, who taught driving for a while many moons ago, still tells horror stories about a few of his students who were trying to learn relatively late in life.

Which is not to say that 36 is too old to learn, but only that it's going to take some work. The good news is that someone learning older should have better judgment than those of us who went through our periods of greatest ineptitude while also suffering from teenage invincibility syndrome.

Megan told me a few months ago that if she had a car, she'd gladly teach me.

Kieran gets it right. It's not that the man who wants to drive thinks his wife or girlfriend can't drive, it's that he has a hard time giving up control over the car, and *that's* what's the gender-linked preference is.

It's probably mostly that, but it's not all that. I find that if the other driver's accelerating and braking rhythems, choice of lane changes, etc. are different from my own, then I get car sick fairly quickly (I keep expecting the car to do something that it's not doing). So I never let my male roommate drive. On the other hand, our female best friend drives just like I do, so I'm happy to let her take the wheel.

Also, on the question of driving the speed limit rather than keeping pace with the surrounding drivers: It's a trusim among traffic safety engineers that the latter is safer until you reach really high speeds (like 90mph).

192 to 190, not 191.

I live in NYC, SCMT, so there's an obstacle right there. And I know hardly anyone with a car that I could practice on.

The reason I think it would be difficult for me to learn now is that I'd be more nervous than I would have been as a teenager. I'm easily startled and easily distracted, and half the time I can't tell left from right.

I get car sick fairly quickly

Ditto; another reason I much prefer to drive.

191: Invincibilty Syndrome and motorcycles:

Do NOT click if you're at all squeamish.

http://home.att.net/~hwill/crash.jpg

I heard this guy winding all the way up through three gears before the bang. He had to be going at least 70mph on Hollywood Blvd before the SUV nailed him at Vine. He survived. (The shot is from my 10th floor office window)

easier to learn, and less scary, than learning to drive stick

I had to learn on a stick shift, since that's all my parents ever owned. Durham has a lovely habit of putting stoplights at the crests of big hills, and mastering a clutch on an incline was far and away the most nerve-wracking part of the experience.

I can't imagine not being able to drive; it seems like such a part of my life. I think I'd give up my computer before I gave up my car, and I, uh, use my computer a lot.

I have lots of irrational fears, but driving is my biggest. I can count on one hand the number of times I've driven a car. In spite of that, I love bicycling fast, even on relatively crowded roads. There's just something about cars. That might be partly because my vision's never been that great; partly because claustrophobia is another of my irrational fears.

However, my brother and SIL share their driving duties pretty equally. One of them usually drives to the destination and the other one drives back.

200: Use can't be the relevant criteria. Which one would you give up: your car, your computer, or your penis?

your car, your computer, or your penis?

My computerized penis plugs into my car's lighter, so I can't rightly answer that.

I'd give up my computer before I gave up my car

That's crazy talk. Granted, I can get pretty much anywhere I want on public transit (and Zipcar makes up for the rest), but I hardly had any problem at all giving up my car last year. You get used to it pretty quickly.

You get used to it pretty quickly.

What, the feeling of panic and terror? I doubt it.

Yes, computers have become so important that, living in a city as I do, I would today give up the car first of the three, where even ten years ago I would have given up the computer first. But I use them both a lot just now, so it'd be a hardship either way.

But Megan told me a few months ago that if she had a car, she'd gladly teach me. She's no chicken.

I love teaching people to drive and I could totally teach you to drive a stickshift no problem. I've taught four other people to drive a stick. I didn't learn to drive a stickshift until my late twenties, but I prefer it now.

We can rent a manual for you to learn on. I'm sure you would be great at it.

I can get pretty much anywhere I want on public transit

This does not hold true for 90% of the country.

For the modern Jedi on-the-go, a car and a laptop are absolutely essential. Anyway, if you did cut it off, my penis would become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

I find that if the other driver's accelerating and braking rhythems, choice of lane changes, etc. are different from my own, then I get car sick fairly quickly

What I can't stand is people who seem utterly incapable of maintaining a steady throttle position. I take the casual carpool in the mornings to get to work, and I'm almost at the point of giving up on it because I've gotten stuck with one too many people who can't just KEEP THEIR FUCKING FOOT STEADY ON THE GAS. Ahem.

(Also, WTF is wrong with people that they'll let strangers into their cars when there's trash strewn about?)

The major reason I would want to learn is that I love road trips in the US, and I hate not being able to help out with driving. Especially since I'm totally crap at reading a map, as well. And if I had a car and could drive, I wouldn't be dependent on other people to take me camping.

The major reason I would want to learn is that I love road trips in the US, and I hate not being able to help out with driving.

Road trip driving is often the easiest driving of all. If you're going through sparsely populated areas on state highways, make your friends teach you during the road trip.

What, the feeling of panic and terror? I doubt it.

I know it's frightening to come to terms with the realization that you won't be able to just jump in the car and drive off into the sunset at a moment's notice, but it's really not that bad.

However, 208 is duly noted.

Why is it an irrational fear?

casual carpool

You mean the respectable version of hitchhiking that people do at the outer suburb park-and-ride lots? That seems like a cool system, though how it manages to organize itself is baffling.

We can rent a manual for you to learn on.

Where? I hate driving automatic transmissions but am under the impression that they're virtually universal in the rental car business.

Another vote for car sickness deciding the driver here! Hell, I get sick on buses and my greatest fear is the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Why are people so proud of being able to drive a stick shift, or so embarrassed that they don't know how to drive one? They sound to me like those people who make their own toothpaste and belts, or drive hundreds of miles every weekend to buy raw meat for their dogs, or those women who wax their legs three times a week. My response is basically "Sure, I guess that sounds like a better way to do it, if you're obsessed enough to actually notice the difference it makes and you want to put a huge amount more effort into it." Why do people care so much; does it put less wear and tear on some aspect of the car?

I can't offhand remember ever even riding in a car with a manual transmission, except the Porsche belonging to one high school friend's father.

215: It's not just park-and-ride lots; there are casual carpool pickups all over the East Bay, including Berkeley and Oakland. I walk to mine.

There *is* no organization. It's completely ad hoc. This works well most of the time, but every so often it'll break down when people can't agree on the unwritten rules. (It used to be that there was no conversation unless it was initiated by the driver, no cell phones were allowed, and the only acceptable radio choices were NPR, smooth jazz, AM news radio, and *maybe* the boomer rock station. Lately I've been in cars playing everything from the ClearChannel-esque Christian station -- "We pray every day at 10!" -- to the hard-rock oldies station. The most fun was the argument between driver and passenger over the passenger yapping away on his cell phone the entire way into the city.)

This whole discussion makes me want to stay single the rest of my life, or at least not attached to the point where this car issue becomes relevant. I couldn't bear to be married to a bad driver.

That uneven pressure on the gas drives me nuts, and is surprisingly common. Please lurch me around and make me carsick, Dad! Also, Mom, brake randomly for no reason whatsoever!

218: I'm used to it, I like it, CHANGEBAD. And it's sure as hell not "a huge amount more effort."

218: Huge amount of effort? It's very easy once you get past the first couple of days confusion about shifting. I don't see the big deal, but then again I don't know who you've been running into.

Shift is more efficient (done properly) and does last longer than an auto trans. It's more responsive, so more fun if you actually like driving. It's not difficult though, so I don't know why people would seem proud of it.

I'm a little surprised you don't ever see them. I've driven several hundred vehicles I suppose, and as a wild ass guess 20% or so were stick. Not counting motorcyles, of course (although I have ridden an auto trans motorcycle, too)

Also a useful skill if one is traveling overseas and the only available rental vehicle capable of hauling 7 passengers turns out to be a 14-passenger Toyota minibus with a manual transmission. Not necessarily my first choice for learning to drive on the wrong side of the road, but good fun.

I have ridden an auto trans motorcycle

Blasphemy.

I do all the driving. I'm a better driver than my wife, and even if I wasn't, she absolutely hates driving.

Why are people so proud of being able to drive a stick shift, or so embarrassed that they don't know how to drive one?

Cryptic Ned has no soul. The Europeans understand. Far fewer automatic transmissions over there.

I find it's easier to pay close attention to the road when driving manual transmission cars.

224 gets it right.

I rode dirtbikes a bit in high school, but no street bikes for me. Too much fun, too much easy speed. 10 grand you get you a new Triumph with fantastic handling and as much speed as about any car on the planet.

222: It's not at all a huge amount of effort unless you're stuck in stop & go L.A. traffic for a few hours. I've driven stick sports and sporty cars all my life but the next car, if there ever is a next car, will be auto everything and totally soundproof. There's little point to thinking about handling and performance if I can't ever get above 25 mph on any road but a freeway.

My previous car was a manual, but I confess that I hate driving manual--most of the fun of driving for me is zoning out (not in a careless way, of course--more of a video game way). That said, there are some cars that are just wasted with an automatic transmission, so people who own those cars and really enjoy driving will opt for manual.

Granted, I can get pretty much anywhere I want on public transit (and Zipcar makes up for the rest), but I hardly had any problem at all giving up my car last year.

I used to think like that. I gave up my car over four years ago. Liberating! I could walk places! Transit! And then I realized that I was basically trapped unless I could get somewhere by bus, plane, or train, which excludes a surprising amount of the country, and I had to rent a damned car when I got there.

228: The stop and go stuff doesn't bother me particularly, but that's as close to a good reason to switch as there is. Not that anyone particularly needs a reason, for that matter. I suppose that I see being able to drive a manual transmission as one of those basic things that separates fundamentally competent people from fundamentally incompetent people, but there's no particular justification for that view in the world we actually live in.

I'm proud of driving a stick-shift instead of an automatic. It's like wearing a clock-watch instead of a casio. In fact, I named my car Clutchy.

224: You'll note I didn't say owned, I said ridden. An odd beast, but I had to fix it.

228: That never bothered me; shifting is nearly autonomous. Oddly enough my current car doesn't shift at all --- which was disconcerting, at first.

I don't know anyone who's proud of driving stick. I think most people are proud of learning to drive stick in the days after learning. It's like anything else--tying your shoes for the first time, using the bathroom by yourself--you're initially proud to pass one of the mini-milestones of adulthood. Soon it becomes commonplace. As for shame about not being able to drive stick, that seems crazy. You are where you are. If someone chose not to drive stick where it was a reasonable option, that might be a different matter. Though, even then, I'm sure it's at least theoretically possible to be a decent human being and not prefer stick.

Hello 235! What am I, chopped beef? I gloat about shifting!

Theory: I think there's all sorts of pressures that lead to an initial man drives dynamic which then gets reinforced by him getting more practice.

1. in most couples, the man is at least slightly older. In teenage male-female couples, this often means that the man is the better driver due to having as much as 100% more driving experience by virtue of age.

2. the man being slightly older and likely to earn more money also means that in young male-female couples he is more likely to be the car owner, and thus the driver.

3. men still work uninterrupted full time careers more often than women do. Hence, they are more experienced commuters and may therefore have more city driving practice.

All this, together with the "lets not fight over nothing" experience, tends to add up to the man in a male-female couple being a more practiced driver, particularly in heavy commuter traffic, who is not used to being a passenger except when an older man is driving, and hence to the man continuing to drive even when driving experience and car ownership have levelled out.

As far as anecdote goes, I taught my partner to drive, and we don't own a car so he's still pretty terrible. I therefore insist on him driving in order to improve whenever the rare case happens that we have access to a car that he is allowed to drive. (There is probably some gender dynamic here: do men mind if their partner is terrible at something they are good at? I view it as a teaching opportunity, perhaps they view it as a chance to do something for someone else.) I will then drive only in very heavy rain or on twisty roads, because I don't want to die. I end up doing the lion's share of the driving though, because we usually rent cars and in Australia rental car companies don't rent to people who have held a licence for three years or less, regardless of age.

My parents do switch on long trips, but my father drives more when they are together. On short trips whoever owns the car drives (after 30 years of marriage they have never merged their finances, so they do actually own the cars separately), but this results in my father driving a lot as his car is bigger due to work reasons (lots of off road driving on people's farms). He also drives 500km or more a week in the course of his job, and while he is only a slightly better driver overall this has resulted in him having enormous tolerance for very long drives and knowing the entire state like the back of his hand, so sometimes he will just drive for 10 hours rather than, say, wake my mother up or stop for the 20 seconds it takes to switch drivers.

drive for 10 hours

Couldn't he just get there in three rolls of his bladder?

230: I know that the US is its own place, but I've never owned a car in 17+ years of being a qualified driver. All my driving has been in rented cars; and this is something I do quite a lot. I regard it as fractional ownership, and if you're a city dweller it's very cost effective. Renting used to require a trip to the nearest rental franchise; however, since the invention of distributed rental schemes (such as Streetcar) even this isn't necessary in most cases. The advantages to renting: the car is always new; you can afford a better car than you can afford; someone else mends and cleans it; when you're done with the car, it just vanishes; when you go to continental Europe, the wheel is on the correct side. Disadvantages: there's less choice; the car is unfamiliar for the first few minutes; you might ding it and have to pay the insurance excess; you have to plan your trips.

Shift is more efficient (done properly) and does last longer than an auto trans.

Lasts longer? But half the calls on Car Talk (my only source of information on this subject) seem to be from people who have burnt out their clutches or stripped their gears (if that's the phrase I want). None of my decade-old cars ever had a problem with their automatic transmissions. They just go boringly on and on.

I believe the questions on Car Talk are biased toward questions like that because Click and Clack the Tapper Brothers don't know anything about automotive technology that has developed in the last 20 years. (although it might be impossible for anyone to diagnose problems with modern cars via telephone)

Last week's show had a question from someone who had a 2005 Prius, and I was thinking "oh boy, are these guys actually going to start talking about how something goes wrong in a fuel cell?", and it turned out to be about something like chocolate in the air vents.

Couldn't he just get there in three rolls of his bladder?

OK, that was funny.

OK, that was funny.

Why the concessionary tone, dear SB? Why not, "Funny again, Ogged!"? Do you have me confused with my humorless feminazi alter-ego?

Couldn't he just get there in three rolls of his bladder?

You've done it again, good sir! I declare that to be the jest of the season!

The funny part was that it gave the lie to any claims of impressive manhood. Most of us just hang it out the window and let fly into the slipstream on long road trips.

We both dislike driving, so it's actually a pretty even split. I do tend to drive the long trips, since she can sleep in a car and I can't, but daily driving's just about a 50/50 split. (We have shared one car for about two years, so we experience each other driving frequently.)

Now, she has told me I'm never going to drive her very shiny, pretty car, when she gets it later this year. That sounds great to me... I get to be lazy until she picks up enough dings.

My wife was slightly younger than me and earned less, but she liked driving more so we split the road trip action 70/30 in her favor. She was also better at getting out of speeding tickets by batting her eyes. Also, her night vision was better than mine, but it's not as if we made up for that by having me drive more during the day.

Almost related: since we split up, she bought a new car. I don't know what it looks like, which makes me happy that I don't have to worry about noticing her on the street.

People should take pride in being able to drive stick and be ashamed for not knowing how to drive stick. Shame on you! Rock on, you others. Same goes for backhoes.

Same goes for backhoes.

Awesome.

shifting is nearly autonomous

For sure. I don't use consciousness for shifting at all, I've been driving stick for almost fifty years now. It's just that after two hours taken to get a few miles down the road and shifting every ten to twenty seconds or so my leg hurts. The whole L.A. traffic thing gets real old real fast, and that's the only fast thing about it.

Some of the freeways (like the 5 to S.F.) are fast (the GPS says I hit 97.3 mph) late at night but I don't get to do that often and those are boringly straight anyway.

The bf and I have gone back and forth with who does the driving. For a while there, I was doing more of the driving (because I owned the reliable car and MY CAR MINE MINE MINE), then once he got a car he started doing more of the driving. It's probably my turn to pick up more of the driving, but now that I have a driving commute, driving is the last freakin' thing I want to do when I get home. Skill or driving experience doesn't really come into it, except on weekend mornings, when I can't drive worth a damn because I'm hungry, crabby and unable to focus. Like lots of things, the driving hasn't been strictly evenly split at any given moment, but has tended to even out over time.

I firmly believe that knowing how to drive stick is a necessary skill. Suppose, my parents always said to me, you were stranded out in the middle of nowhere and the only vehicle that could get you home happened to be a manual transmission! I'm not sure precisely what scenario they were envisioning, but I'm proud to know how. My wife takes special pride in being a woman who drives a stick.

I don't know how to drive a backhoe, though.

Oh, and I don't think I knew that alif spent time in St. Louis. I myself learned to drive in a suburban St. Louis parking lot. A funeral home, if I remember correctly.

252: Just in case?

That may have been my dad's intention. Not a rousing vote of confidence.

As it turns out, he had it in him to teach one kid how to drive stick. My younger sister popped the clutch before he said, "Well, guess we'll buy you an automatic." The youngest two never even got that far.

The closest I've ever come to that famous "what-if" scenario was when my ex broke his toe and couldn't kick-start his manual transmission motorcycle. Did I take over and save the day? No. I slipped while trying to kick-start that fucker and scraped all of the skin off my shins. He took back over at that point.

251 - my parents always told me I'd need to be able to drive a stickshift, so that I could get someone to the hospital if that was the only car around.

It's a tricky category of injuries - those that disable the owner of the vehicle, yet don't warrant burdening an ambulance with your petty tears.

It's the same category of disasters that my grandma frets over when you don't answer the call waiting AND the answering machine doesn't pick up. PANIC PANIC CALL RELATIVES PANIC

I had to learn stick because that was all my parents owned. They did buy a cheap used automatic when I was first learning, but it only lasted a couple months (there was a reason it was cheap) and then it was stick or nothing.

As it turns out, he had it in him to teach one kid how to drive stick.

I demonstrated to my dad that you can, in fact, start from a dead stop in third gear while pointed uphill. He did teach my brother how to drive, too, but I guess six years was enough time to recover.

Manual transmissions are a pain in traffic jams, indeed. But for most in-city driving, I really enjoy the added control it gives you. Especially if you drive like I do with lots of passing, zipping in and out of traffic, and quick starts from stoplights.

I think most people who really like driving for its own sake enjoy driving a stick.

I had never imagined that an adult wouldnt know how to drive a car until I got to college and met one of those New York City people. What a culture shock.

I had to learn stick because that was all my parents owned.

It was presented to me as, "why would you want to drive anything but a stick?," which, point. Though I have a vague memory of my dad floating a trial balloon past my grandfather about me learning on his automatic and getting an OMG HELL NO in response.

Where do I fit in on this thread?... all over the place. I am almost certain I am a worse driver than Ellen (I'm definitely a better navigator) -- and yet I feel self-conscious and nervous if I perceive that I am not getting to do my share of the driving when we are in the car together. And I get mad at her when she criticizes my inferior driving.

Also: speed limits are a really good thing to obey on surface streets. It freaks me out that people routinely drive 35-40 mph on streets where the posted limit is 25, and 40-45 on streets where the posted limit is 35 -- such streets are not intended for fast driving. I give less thought to posted speed limits on highways, freeways and turnpikes.

I'll admit it: if travelling with someone for less than, say, 2 hours, I'll absolutely prefer him or her to drive if given a choice. I much more enjoy passenger status, staring out the window.

I recognize that this is often not quite fair, but (this would be the admission): a man is much more easily prevailed upon to drive, and I will take advantage of his usual willingness to do so by casually offering as we approach the car: you wanna drive? (Dangle car keys.)

The chief problem with this approach is that there are a number of places I've been a number of times, but couldn't tell you how to actually get there.

That said, during longer drives I actually prefer to alternate driving, else I become bored myself.

The last man I dated rather annoyed me by criticizing my driving as I drove us back from dinner. Before I dropped him at his house, he forced me to place my hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. Was I inclined to go in with him to his place after dinner? No.

to place my hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel

Interesting euphemism...

"10 and 2 me, babe!"

If you have an airbag, you're supposed to put your hands at 9 and 3.

"10 and 2 me, babe!"

5 minutes before the 10 and 2 insistence, he declared that he likes to be treated like a delicate china tea-cup.

Is it any wonder I simply left him off in front of his house and promptly rolled the window down, let down my hair, jacked the volume on the CD player, propped my left foot up against the dashboard, and pulled away with a single hand loosely gripping the *bottom* of the fucking steering wheel at 6.

"10 and 2 me, babe!"

First you have to juice some beets.

10 and 2? I learned 9 and 3, and was told that 10 and 2 was an "obsolete practice" when I was in driver's ed.

"Sit as far back from the steering wheel as possible while still remaining in safe control of the vehicle."

Nyet. Whether that's safe with respect to airbag deployment, it messes with your lower back to recline so. Sit upright!

Worst posture for lower back problems: driving in semi-reclined position with leg(s) stretched out before one.

Word.

Worst posture for lower back problems: driving in semi-reclined position with leg(s) stretched out before one.

Wasn't there some recent finding about an angle of 135 degree back being the easiest on the spine? Legs all the way stretched out doesn't do the sciatic nerve much good tho'.

Yup. Here's one cite site:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15939377/

Legs all the way stretched out doesn't do the sciatic nerve much good tho'.

Yep. Nope.

I hate driving with passengers. (Didn't learn to drive until I was 25, which might have something to do with it). So yeah, I much prefer that more or less anyone else drive, rather than me.

(Also, stick shifts are fun. Plus, if you're in Europe, much more likely to get a stick as a rental.)

I don't have the stamina to read through the 274 previous posts, so just consider this another data point, rather than ongoing commentary.

My wife and I have, for most of the past 37 years, pretty much shared the driving. We've only had one car (at a time), and she probably uses it more than I do, especially around town, so she has done more of the city driving, as she knows her way around better. I've done more of the long-distance stuff, probably because of greater stamina, but also because I can't fully "rest" in a car, and she (sometimes) can, so that gets us there with one of us in better shape than otherwise.

Recently (the past few years) I've done more of the total driving, including in-town, but that may be in part a factor of age. OTOH, there are still numerous occasions where she drops me off someplace and continues on with the car, and that's never a source of any tension.

I'm not exactly sure why we are (comparatively) immune from the gender-driving assumptions, given that we're certainly not perfect egalitarians in various other aspects of life. My father always drove when with my mother, and I think her father did the same. But I was never really into "car culture" the way many boys of my generation were, and don't have my (gender) identity wrapped up in automotive skills, much less ownership, the way some do. And so it was not hard for me to recognize that she has always been at least as good a driver as I, so why not share the role (burden? opportunity?). Moreover, I was never bugged by any male friends for "letting my wife drive," which I understand happens to some.

Just lucky, I guess. In lots of ways.

When the three of us got together (two females and moi), there were two cars and I rode the bus to work, so I did the driving on weekends and trips, since I didn't get to the rest of the time. Now we all have cars, but I still do most/all of the group driving. I have demonstrated to both wives I have the best reflexes/anticipation of the group, and I just like driving. The ladies drive competently, but I watch the road and can see what's going to happen before they do on a regular basis. When we were in LA for the Worldcon last fall, my legal wife (D2) told me "normally I don't like it when you drive aggressively, but please do it here." I really enjoyed driving in LA (I have also walked, pace Missing Persons), though when we passed the exit to the Nixon Library it took all my willpower to keep from going there and pissing on his grave. It will happen, though, I swear it!

Per M. w-lfs-n, the driver must control the tunes, else madness results. On the way back from Toronto in '03, D2 took over the wheel from Ro and put on some Celtic music that was nice, but totally soporific. She pulled over after half an hour and told me to drive.

I learned to drive on a Chevy sedan of some variety and a late '60s VW bus, which still gives me the feeling I can drive anything with 4 wheels. Stick is great, unless you're driving a '78 Chevette 4-banger. Especially if you were driving a Cadillac an hour before.

I do all the driving, but perhaps that is because my Norwegian wife has no driver's license. My dad always drove as well, although since they are divorced my mom of course drives all the time now. And riding with her, I know why my dad always drove.

And totally off topic, but I love this place. I rarely comment, time change, no time, two young kids, blah blah blah. But I think I read every thread here, which might have something to say about my sanity. But anyway, just wanted to say that.

Carry on.

totally off topic

Not at all -- self-love is always the primary concern ATM.

My partner nearly always drives when we're together. He prefers to drive than be a passenger, and also he hates having to talk to the kids, pass them drinks, etc, so he'd rather drive and be excused that. I always offer, but even if we're driving several hours in a day, he'll nearly always do it all himself.

I'm perfectly competent - I think we drive in a fairly similar fashion - and I'm the one driving our big 8-seater van most of the time when it's just me and the kids, and have done plenty of long journeys, so it's not that I'm not as happy or confident driving as he is.

We both learnt to drive manuals - the vast majority of people here do - but we've got an automatic now. It's a Japanese import. We've had a few automatics, but because we've picked the car, not picked the style of gearbox. Driving an automatic is lazy driving, but I don't dislike it.

And we take our 4 kids out to dinner, at reasonably nice places (as well as trashy places), and as long as you put enough effort into keeping them engaged in conversation, they're fine. Couple of months ago, I was on a train with them all, for about 5 hours. As we got ready to get off, the elderly lady behind us complimented me on their lovely behaviour on the journey. I was flattered, but admitted that Nintendo probably deserved more of the credit!

I've pretty much always driven manual gearbox cars. Although I have driven automatics in a past job.

I dislike automatics for precisely the same reason Ogged likes them. They feel too 'computer gamey' -- like driving an electric cart -- and, for me anyway, make me feel like I am zoning out in a not-good (rather than good) way.

Way up at the top of the the thread, I responded to the gender discussion LB had in mind, noting that Anastaplo thought driving was a good example of the persistence of gender norms even when there was no plausible reason for them, on an operating assumption of equality. Now he would be implying that "man" and "woman" are not merely social constructs, and both men and women know it and act on it, tolerating myriad "double standards despite ideology.

Now, is it important to fight this kind of thing out, to find some explanation that accounts for it in terms of easily mutable social norms? Nobody doubts a society in which women were expected to be the default drivers could easily exist, given accidents of social history.

I have a suspicion that people vary in their determination to interrogate every gender-norming pattern, to find its causes. Is there something fundamental at stake?

God I love my bike.

Today was one of the first days in months when the roads were really dry and I had forgotten how much nicer it is to ride when you aren't dodging puddles.

Quiet roads (partially because I have to be hear unfortunately early), wonderful sunrise (I could live without that), fantastic, tricked out bike, really really nice.

Not necessarily my first choice for learning to drive on the wrong side of the road, but good fun.

On vacation in Scotland a few years ago a friend and I rented the cheapest car we could find: a Ford Ka with exactly enough room for the two of us, one suitcase per and one soda per. I hadn't driven a stick in years and he had never driven one at all. Proudly, I only stalled out an average of once a day for the week we had it; five of those were in the first half-mile of driving it. At the end of that half-mile? A three- or four-lane round-about in Port of Glasgow. Whee! I came out of that week desperate to own a stick again despite having the vague impression that all the gears were backwards on American cars. My next car was a cheap '87 Isuzu Trooper with a manual transmission and the shifter was about nine feet long, requiring massive agility and movement to shift from one gear to another. It felt like I was driving some kind of contraption out of Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. I adored that car. I miss it to this day.

Funny but true: my father told me explicitly when I was a teenager that driving a manual was more masculine.

Most of us just hang it out the window

Real men plug their nuts into the console and change gears with the shifter God gave 'em.

Wasn't there some recent finding about an angle of 135 degree back being the easiest on the spine?

It's good to see some affirmation of my slacker posture. I've ignored the "sit up straight" thing my entire life because reclined feels so much better.

I know I adopted a straight arm posture in conscious emulation of sports car racers. I would have caught that from my brother. That was the standard: heel-and-toe, driving gloves, the whole bit.

The style is attributed Alberto Ascari, the first F1 star to emerge after WWII. Pre-war drivers didn't use that posture. Any picture of Rudy Carriciola, Tazio Nuvolari, or for that matter Wilbur Shaw, will show them much closer to the wheel, flexing their biceps.

Oddly enough, or maybe not, Nascar drivers have always stayed much closer to the wheel, more-or-less upright, in the pre-war style.

281: I didn't follow that at all. Try it again?

My father insisted that I learn how to drive a stick in case I got into a situation where I was the only sober person in the group and needed to drive home.

Since I skipped a grade, I didn't get my license until late my junior year in high school. Combining that with not having a car in college and then spending five years in NYC, I've done much less driving than most people my age so I am always glad to let someone else drive.

I drive with my hands at 7 and 5.

286: Really? What do you think I might be asking? I thought it was clear but I talk to myself a lot.

Honestly, I don't know. The general topic is identifiable -- something about the mutability or immutability of gender roles, and how different people relate to analyzing that, but beyond that I'm lost.

285: I picked it up from an article by Phil Hill back in dinosaur days. (I ran into him recently at a Ferrari exhibition. He's looking older than I remember him)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Hill

Denis Jenkinson's books didn't help to make me any saner on the road. I'd have sold my soul and more to be Stirling Moss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Jenkinson

I must have been all of about nine years old when I first read With Moss In The Mille Miglia; it was in a collection my brother had. I owned The Racing Driver but seem to have lost my copy. Also Pierro Taruffi's famous book. There's a great description of Taruffi's learning process on the Mexican Road Race in Mickey Thompson's Challenger

I've cleaned up 281 a bit:

Way up at the top of the the thread, I responded to the gender discussion LB had in mind, noting that Anastaplo thought driving was a good example of the persistence of gender norms even when there was no plausible reason for them, on an operating assumption of equality. I think he was implying that "man" and "woman" are not merely social constructs, and both men and women know it and act on it, tolerating myriad "double standards" despite both believing in an ideology of equality.

Does anybody think it's important to fight this kind of thing out, to find some explanation for a disparity in driving patterns that accounts for it in terms of easily mutable social norms? I would think that nobody doubts that a society in which women were expected to be the default drivers could easily exist, given unspecified accidents of social history. It's only significant as an indicator, as an example.

I have a suspicion that people vary in their determination to interrogate every gender-norming pattern, to find its causes. Is there something fundamental at stake, not necessarily in this particular example but in patterns like it?

I have a suspicion that people vary in their determination to interrogate every gender-norming pattern, to find its causes. Is there something fundamental at stake, not necessarily in this particular example but in patterns like it?

I would posit that people vary in their determination to interrogate every norm, period, and that how much you do this has to do with how important being true to yourself vs. being aligned with society is to you. For white, middle-class women, gender's going to be central to this kind of interrogation process; for others it may be race or class.

If I understand you correctly now, I think the value in addressing individual issues like this isn't that there's any important justice issue arising out of men driving more.

Part of this post was just tossed off Andy Rooneyism -- "Ja ever notice that...?" If there's anything important about it, it's just pointing out that we really don't live in a post-sexist society. Where you've got a circumstance where most people aren't going to fight about it as a justice issue, people fall very strongly into traditional gender roles. It sheds some light on the forces that operate in more important areas.

I'm sure that this response will go unread, but

WTF is wrong with people that they'll let strangers into their cars when there's trash strewn about?

I do this. It's because there's always trash in my car, and I can't be bothered to clean it. It's just a car. If there's ketchup on the passenger seat or something, I'll put a towel down for you.

How's the wounds?

And where are the pictures?

Sometimes you want/have to give someone a ride, but your car is dirty. Would it be better to make someone walk?

Nah, you just hand them the skateboard you keep in the trunk and tell them to hang on to a fender.

The question I took away from this example when I was asked to think about it years ago, was whether by definition there will be no such patterns in a "post-sexist society," or if instead such a society will one be one where the battle lines will be, forever, not far from where they are now: equality before the law, and in education and opportunity, against a backdrop of differing gender behaviors and expectations, ever mutating and popping up like crocuses in spring.

I think it's very easy to overestimate how benign all those crocuses are. The gender roles that put women in the literal passenger seat are the same gender roles that hold us back professionally -- I don't think we can preserve charming and unimportant rituals of gendered deference while genuinely equalizing opportunity.

296: Much better after I pulled out all the thorns and took a shower.

297: Okay, I'll upload them now. I don't feel like writing anything worth reading, anyway.

I do this. It's because there's always trash in my car, and I can't be bothered to clean it. It's just a car. If there's ketchup on the passenger seat or something, I'll put a towel down for you.

My car's often a mess, too, but for that very reason I'd never let a stranger in it unless they *had* to get in the car for some reason. (On the rare occasions that I drive to work, I often don't take the casual carpool for this very reason, so it's not like I'm holding people up to some standard of behavior I don't live up to myself.) Friends' cars are different.

(And, you know, it's not just trash. One car I rode in recently just smelled funky and wrong, to the extent that it made me a bit sick to my stomach.)

People tell me that my car smells like maple syrup, but I don't see it, myself.

I would be rather surprised if you *did* see it.

Sometimes you want/have to give someone a ride, but your car is dirty. Would it be better to make someone walk?

In the case of casual carpool, drivers generally know well ahead of time that they'll have passengers, so they could take 5 minutes to lint-roller up the dog hair and chuck the McDs bags. It's particularly revolting to make strangers sit in your trash or on your crusty ketchup.

I'm a synaesthete.

Food trash in cars is really gross.

I should say that I don't have food trash in my car.

306: Bah. If you're going to be pissy, take your own car.

Obviously, one should take care that one's passengers don't get ketchup on their butts or doghair on their work clothes. But aside from actually making *them* dirty, I honestly don't care. It's just transit.

It's just transit.

Do you generally throw your trash on the floor of public transit?

310: It's a two-way favor. I'm getting you into the carpool lane and saving you $4 in toll; the least you could do is not make me sit knee-deep in your old newspapers.

I think it's very easy to overestimate how benign all those crocuses are

Not benign at all. His Socratic method was to challenge a generation that believed a gender-neutral society, a non-sexist one, would be easily created by straightforward means. I can well remember classmates of mine talking about how they intended to raise their children utterly free of sexism.

Obviously, one should take care that one's passengers don't get ketchup on their butts or doghair on their work clothes. But aside from actually making *them* dirty, I honestly don't care. It's just transit.

I think B.Ph.D. has it right. It's a car. It's going to have trash and kids' toys and stuff in it. You want to clean up a little for so you do not gross out your passengers, as she notes, but otherwise, what's the big deal.

In the spirit of 310, I'd have to work pretty hard to make my vehicle dirtier than Muni or BART.

I always cleaned my car carefully before dates, to try to make a good impression.

314: If it's someone you know, it's not such a big deal. But when it's a stranger's car, it's much more of an imposition. It's like when you're on transit and sitting next to someone who has six shopping bags all poking into you, or when you have to sit next to someone who's particularly smelly or have their crap music turned up to 11 and it's bleeding out their headphones. Not cool.

307: I knew a real live synaesthete in college. She listened to a lot of Grateful Dead because Jerry's guitar made a pretty blue sound. She could also tune a guitar by ear perfectly without even comparing strings. She said all the music I listened to was boring brown mud.

315: You'd be surprised how many people are up to the challenge.

On public transport, it's pretty easy to change seats or remain standing or move down the car. Cars are designed to trap you in place.

314 gets it.

To the rest of you, all I have to say is when you have kids, you can come around and lecture the rest of us about not spending our time keeping our stupid cars clean enough. Until then, feel free to offer to be the always driver in exchange for gas money, or something.

It's a good thing I've never known anyone else who had kids and a car, so I can believe whatever B says. Clean your car if you have passengers, you lazy asses!

319: We may be in agreement on this, but there are traditionally large gender differences in what's considered appropriately clean. Actual crap on the seat or where your feet need to go is one thing, but old receipts / trail maps / empty gatorade bottles on the floor between the seats? Big water bottle or pack of gatorade bottles on the floor or behind the seat? Who cares? Clearly both people find the casual carpool advantageous or else they wouldn't do it (pareto improvement! econ 101!), so surely if it's that much of a problem people should just wait for the next driver?

322: No doubt your other car-driving friends with kids are as snobby as you are, and spend more time fussing over vacuuming their upholstery than they do on going for long bike rides with the kids, or using petri dishes to test whether Mama, Kid, cat, or mice has the dirtiest hands.

324: "snobby" s/b "prissy"

Exactly. Apo, is your car clean? And if not, do you give a shit?

No and no.

B, I think you're missing the critical stranger's car distinction here. Also, IME, parentmobiles at the casual carpool tend to be on the LESS messy side on average, so step away from that high horse, missy.

It's nice to see that Ogged and IDP, at least, were not raised by wolves.

Dude, you don't have to accept a ride, and if you do, then don't bitch, man.

"Raised by wolves" s/b "raised by people with proper priorities."

Actually, you kind of do have to accept a ride, especially if it's later in the morning and there aren't any other cars around. The alternative is getting over to BART and taking that in, which can take anywhere from half an hour to an hour longer, depending on how close your casual carpool stop is to a BART station.

Once freaked out a friend of a friend upon picking him up from the train station, as the inside of the (rental) car was so clean. On the assumption that it wasn't a rental, he thought it was weird that a car didn't look lived in.

Our cars weren't always vacuumed, but they weren't always cluttered either. I never quite understood the French fries under the seat thing.

Also, I'm not complaining because people aren't autoclaving their cars before I set my dainty ass in them. I'm complaining because people have mountains of filth that isn't being confined to the one passenger seat generally not in use.

Next time you show up at work smelling like a dog you've never met, you can have standing here.

Wait, B, are you denying the existence of a messy/disgusting distinction or just tweaking ogged? My car generally has various crap strewn around the interior, but decaying organic material, large cockroach populations, etc. are legitimately a problem.

No way, dude. I'll go along with the idea that enclosed spaces that smell like dog are gross, but that's a different issue.

322: Now you do. It's not that difficult to avoid turning a car in to a failed experiment in biological warfare even with two kids inhabiting it. Messy cars are driven by messy minds.

Who has cockroach problems in their *car*? Come on. And if they did, you really wouldn't ride in the car.

People who are raised to be hung up about whether or not their cars are clean are people who end up being too shy to pee in public bathrooms.

Messy cars are driven by messy minds.

Messy cars are driven by people who use their cars to get from one place to another, instead of as status symbols.

My cars have often been messy, but when I know in advance I'm going to be giving someone a ride, I'll clean it up a bit.

But for dates, I used to use the vacum at the car wash. The ignorance of youth; I now know I should have been cleaning my room, bathroom and medicine cabinet, too.

336: People who live in the tropics and leave food bits in the car. And yes, I've had to wipe out cockroach infestations a couple of times.

I'm basically on your side in this, as a glance inside my car would demonstrate, but there's a difference between messy and just plain unsanitary, and it's not unreasonable to expect some minimal level of sanitation in a car.

A small sapling once took root and sprouted tiny leaves in the back floorboard of my mother's Grenada.

B's just sensitive because everyone quit carpooling with her when they saw her kid's hair all over the seats.

Oh, you haven't lived until you've opened the door of a car and seen dozens of cockroaches just scatter. (Not at casual carpool, thank God; in a rental years ago on Kauai, the last one on the island, to our neverending joy. Maybe roach cars are a Hawaii thing?)

I should stay out of this conversation, but I think I've already mentioned that my car had rats once -- they chewed through the back seat and into the glove compartment (note: do not store circus peanuts in the glove compartment). It really wasn't egregiously disgusting, just some crumbs stuck under the car seats, and candy in the glove compartment.

Rats.

A small sapling once took root and sprouted tiny leaves in the back floorboard of my mother's Grenada.

RMP wins the thread.

I'm basically on your side in this, as a glance inside my car would demonstrate

If you all saw the clutter in my car you'd laugh and laugh. But I pick that shit up before I take a passenger. Five minutes and a trash bag, people. Look into it.

While I'm at it, my sister and her husband had to abandon their rental car in the Bahamas during the honeymoon; it developed an ant infestation and the little critters ate through some essential component, causing a leak.

Then, to escape the leak, the ants came pouring out of the vents on the dash.

I have a messy car, but I've never even heard of insect or rodent infestations in cars prior to this thread. Other than this.

OMG. I'll just be here under my desk, huddling in the fetal position and whimpering, if anyone needs me.

There are rats down there, you know.

And if they did, you really wouldn't ride in the car.

I think you're underestimating the power of the unwritten code of the casual carpool. One of the prime rules is: you get in the first car in line. It's rude not to. You also generally can't tell that a car's gonna be messy inside until you actually get in, and once you've hopped in it's particularly rude to get back out.

Also:

Messy cars are driven by people who use their cars to get from one place to another, instead of as status symbols.

I drive a 7-year-old Honda Civic.

346: It must have been pretty cool when they emptied a couple of five gallon gas cans into that thing and tossed a match.

348: Hanging from the ceiling cat-styley then. Brr.

350: And you probably don't have any difficulty distinguishing between the reality of "car" and that of "trash can", no matter what the deconstructionists might assert, right?

350: Vampire bats.

Gack. 352.

Ceci n'est pas une poubelle.

354: Curled up in a ball in the middle of the floor, then. My coworkers are going to get damn sick of tripping over me.

My wife is extraordinarily helpful when I'm driving. She points out red lights, railroad crossings, cattle crossing the road, wobbling cyclists etc etc. I'm quite sure I'm a much safer driver with her beside me......

Catalogue of contents of Honda Accord interior at 2pm on 3/6/07:

2 soda cans, empty
1 completely useless squeegee theoretically for scraping water + plant crap from the jacarandas off my windshield, but it's too stiff
1 box of cassettes [under seat, so not readily available]
1 dead cassette, Kingston Trio
1 CD player
4 CDs [Loreena McKennit; The Shins, Jefferson Airplane and Kings of Convenience] [Shut up, Ben]
1 grocery bag from which I wrested my prescription bottles and left. torn and lonely on the seat
1 two-foot MagLite, just in case I feel the urge to smash some other driver's windshield need a light source
1 roll of paper towels
1 smashed box of tissues
1 small plastic bag of 20 Mule Team Borax, in case I suddenly need to do laundry

It's possible that much of my aversion to trash in the car is a consequence of a kind of car-theft-prevention paranoia, a sort of aggressive "see! see! nothing in here! absolutely nothing!" approach.

You're afraid that having trash in your car makes it more likely to be stolen?

JM has very nice trash.

Good thing she doesn't have a car.

I used to have a car, back when I lived in the car theft capitol of the USA. The idea is that having any visible crap in your car encourages people to break in and rummage around.

It may be a silly idea.

Curled up in a ball in the middle of the floor...

...Ezekiel saw the wheel.

If the visible crap is visibly crap, then yes, it does sound kind of silly. And perhaps a would-be car thief would be more tempted by a car that wouldn't need to be cleaned out before being sold.

Curled up in a ball in the middle of the floor...

...Ezekiel saw the wheel.

Excellent work, Grandma.