Modern Mystery! Women More Likely to Sit In Passenger Seat Than Men

This shouldn’t be too surprising: Women are more likely to be passengers in vehicles than men are. That is, men are more likely to take the wheel and women are more likely to go along for the ride.

Also not surprising: The face/palm way that the Freakonomics guy addresses the issue:

Why do men dominate the wheel? In the past, physical factors were important. My grandmother learned to drive only after the introduction of automatic transmission and power steering, which made the task much less physically demanding. But driving today’s cars requires little strength. In addition, our roads are engineered to be quite forgiving, for example with very long reaction times permitted by the system.

What else might be responsible? Cultural factors? Social ones? Psychological differences? Logistics? Animal instinct? Historical inertia?

Furthermore, is this state of affairs due to men’s preferences, women’s, or both?

And should we care?

What in the world could be responsible for the fact that when men and women ride in cars together, men are more likely to drive? Hmm… mysterious.