Certain groups get a bad rap for their driving. But the people who made up the stereotypes may be the real culprits of bad roadside behavior.
Women are often portrayed and stereotyped as bad drivers. This trope is steeped in long-standing societal biases reinforced by media, jokes, and other cultural narratives.
They say women are too cautious, slow, have poor spatial awareness (for tasks like parking and merging), and are bad with directions. Meanwhile, men are hailed as confident, better parkers, and unwilling to ask for directions.
But the data—and this woman’s observation in a Home Depot parking lot—seems to prove otherwise.
Home Depot parking habits
In a trending video with more than 36,000 views, contractor @isawhertiktok called men out for their hypocritical parking skills.
Home Depot is generally considered to have male-dominant clientele. That’s because construction and crafts like plumbing, carpentry, and electricity are traditionally male-centric as well.
With that information, it’s safe to assume that most of the people parking in Home Depot’s parking lot are guys.
Well, from how they park their cars and trucks in the lot, it seems men don’t quite have the superior spatial awareness for parking that they taunt women about.
In @isawhertiktok’s video, the parking lot was full of cars and vans that were not only parked extremely crooked but weren’t even in the lines designated for the spot.
“Women are the bad drivers? Why does the Home Depot parking lot look like this?” @isawhertiktok said.
“The math ain’t matching,” @isawhertiktok added.
@isawhertiktok Can’t argue with facts
♬ original sound – PlatinumCard
Are men the bad drivers? The data is in
The data contradicts the stereotype that women are bad drivers.
In fact, research finds that men are more likely to engage in risky behavior when driving.
What are some risky behaviors?:
- Speeding
- Cutting people off
- Not using seat belts
- Driving while impaired by alcohol.
Men tend to end up in more severe and fatal crashes, while women have fewer accidents and tend to be in smaller collisions, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a science-based nonprofit dedicated to reducing motor vehicle deaths, injuries, and property damage through research, evaluation, and education.
Despite this, women are more likely to be injured or killed in a crash of similar severity. This is partly because most car safety tests are not done with female crash dummies and because of the types of cars driven across genders.
Between 1975 and 2022, about double or more of the number of men died in car crashes compared to women, the IIHS reported.
On top of this, when it comes to who is causing the crash, it’s men 60% of the time and women 40% (this data doesn’t seem to account for nonbinary people), Malman Law reported. And less than 30% of traffic violations are given to women.
However, on average, women tend to drive about 30% less than men in a year.
Commenters react
“And I bet the ulta lot is perfect,” the top comment read.
“I swear, hardware store always have the worst parking those men are always in such a rush,” a person said.
“The pickup trucks parked at Walmart too, it’s always horrendous,” another wrote.
The Daily Dot reached out to @isawhertiktok for comment via TikTok direct message and comment.
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