I am fortunate in that the men in my family are mostly quite pc in their attitude to women – with one exception; when it comes to drivers, I don’t know why, but jokes about female drivers still seem to amuse, especially when stuck in traffic. However, a new study is giving me the last laugh! It turns out that men are more inconsistent and dangerous on the roads than women! Why? Because men become seven times more stressed when caught in traffic than women (I repeat, 7 times!) In this most recent study which tested levels of stress hormones in saliva on volunteers stuck in traffic, the levels for women went up by just over 8% while the men’s levels shot up by an alarming 60%! Having got over the shock of this information, I realize however that it is quite understandable considering other studies that have shown us that the male brain responds to stress overwhelmingly with the ‘fight-or-flight-response’, whereas women have more varied stress-responses (including ‘tend-and-befriend’). In this particular study it was found that women handled traffic better by doing simple things like playing music on the radio or CD player, and singing along with it. Ahhhhh – I’ve always known that singing one’s lungs out in the car had a higher purpose! Now I know for sure!
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