WOMEN WORSE WITH ROAD RAGE THAN MEN

(October, 2016) A new study suggests that road rage affects women more than men, and that females are far more likely to lose their cool behind the wheel. The study, by car manufacturer Hyundai, involved 1,000 UK drivers, 450 of who were also tracked using a webcam. Participants were ‘sense tested’ to see how sound, sight, smell, touch and taste provoke emotional responses while driving. The results from the sense testing were fed into a specially-created software which gave each participant a unique ‘Driving Emotion Test’ score. The results showed that, on average, women are 12 per cent angrier than men when behind the wheel. The researchers suggest that driving sparks an ancient defense instinct, dating back to our hunter-gatherer days. These evolutionary traits kicked in during the test when women were stuck behind a slow driver, shouted or beeped at, had to deal with a back-seat driver, or were faced with a driver not using their turn signal. Patrick Fagan, a behavioral psychologist from Goldsmiths University London who led the study, gave his thoughts on the findings: “Evolutionary theory suggests our early female ancestors had to develop an acute sense of danger for anything that threatened them and their young if their cave was undefended while men were out hunting. That ‘early warning system’ instinct is still relevant today, and women drivers tend to be more sensitive to negative stimuli, so get angry and frustrated quicker.”
* “Or else, it’s PMS. We still have to check that,” he added.
* So they sent overly sensitized women out in cars to see how badly they’d freak out? Are they crazy?
* 12 percent road ragier. That number seems about right. Thanks, science.
* How do they turn 12% into “far more likely”? A dollar and twelve cents isn’t “far more money” than a dollar.
* If women weren’t 12% angrier before, they are now after reading this study.