TAE to women: hang up the phone.

I've mentioned before that an increasingly large amount of scientific, peer-reviewed research shows that people are unsafe drivers while talking or texting on their cell phones. My solution, rather than limit the freedom of drivers to do so, was instead to automate cars.

I have conducted, over the past several days, an intensive and unscientific survey of drivers. At first I did this out of irritation because a pair of drivers on their cell phones almost killed me, but by the second day I was quite curious because I saw a trend emerging.
What I did was record the gender of drivers in cars that either passed me or were passed by me during my 13-mile, one way commute. I then recorded whether or not that driver was talking on their cell phone or texting, or neither. I did this for 4 commutes to work, and three home, until I reached a total of 1200 cars that had passed or been passed by me.

In all, of 1200 drivers, I recorded 234 of them using their cell phones while their cars were moving. That is just under 20% of drivers using their cell phones, which most authorities consider unsafe. But get this: of the 234 using their cell phones, 231 of them were women.

That is an astounding 98.7% of drivers in my sample pool that were using cell phones. Now I'll be the first in line at the "this isn't statistically sound test group sampling" line, and I admit, I did not record cars that were not moving, or the thousands of cars that moved along with my truck and I was unable to see the driver. But I humbly submit that while the statistic might skew more towards male cell phone use, it would still be an unbelievably lopsided number.

Now, I am not accusing women of being bad drivers. Nor am I accusing them of some sort of gender-based obsession with cellular technology. I am simply pointing out that on my daily commute, there are so many women on their cell phones that it nears absurdity.


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