Although many of our driving behaviors may be justified in our own minds, these three areas prove to have a lot of influence which inhibit many drivers from recognizing the dangerous realities associated with them. For example, everyday people come in contact with things such as tail gating, car magazines, aggressive driving, or cars that breakdown. On the surface we see them as just that, however, when those things are perceived as how they effect our driving philosophies, a whole new perspective is opened to us, some of these being issues of control and compliance, intimidation and fear, or plain patterns of self destructiveness. For instance, in class discussion we spoke of a few gender differences in driving. Men are more likely to criticize other drivers to where the other driver can hear them and women are more likely to criticize other drivers to themselves out of fear of retaliation.
Women prefer their male counterparts to drive they ride as passengers.
Interestingly enough, these are the patterns of thinking that shape much of our driving philosophies, and are reinforced by society because they are so accepted as part of the norm. Another interesting example of how norms effect our driving philosophy was shared by a fellow student. Her boyfriend had told her that while he was on the way to pick her up from school , another car had recklessly cut in front of him which really made him upset. He had turned his car around and began following the other car until he realized it was a female driver. At that point he stopped and was actually shocked that a woman would have driven so violently.