Driving in pop culture franchises has made automotive vehicles the go-to source for a rush of adrenaline or just an opportunity to look ‘cool’ while shifting gears. Films don’t hesitate to flick the camera towards the gearbox and queue intense musical scores every time the protagonist lags in a race.
This, combined with decades and decades of vehicular improvement, has brought about several myths associated with driving. Why don’t we take a gander at some of them and see if we cannot debunk the very essence of what makes them a myth?
1. Is it Illegal to eat and drive?
Firstly, the myth that needs to be debunked is related to eating and driving. People often find themselves running late for work or an important meeting, and they grab a food item on the way. In reality, it is not illegal to eat and drive, but it is not recommended. This is because any task one must perform apart from driving-related ones is considered a distraction. So, if the food in the car spills while eating, the situation can, quite quickly, escalate to a safety hazard. The driver will then be distracted, from driving, to clean up the mess.
So, debunking the myth of ‘Is it illegal to eat and drive,’ it is not illegal, but it is not recommended either. In Pakistan, however, people hardly get pulled over for it.
2. My manual transmission gives a better average
Secondly, the era is full of gear heads; many believe that manual transmission cars get better fuel economy than automatic transmission ones. It is accurate that, at one time, manual vehicles gave better kilometers per liter, that time has long since passed. One would find that, in Pakistan, an automatic ‘Cultus’ could provide a better average than its manual counterpart.
A manual transmission ‘Corolla’ may not give as good of an average as compared to a ‘Passo’ with CVT transmission. The drops in an economy that come with grinding gears and stretching the RPM more than is required while driving were eliminated when the driver stopped switching gears.
It’s quite impractical to believe that manuals can give a better average while driving when you have emerging technology such as CVT transmission and 8+ gear automatics. Of course, drivers racing on the coastal areas of Karachi, with their heavily modified manual vehicles, still tend to disagree.
3. Women vs. Men
Thirdly, there has been a myth that has also been made into a stereotype. It has existed for quite a long while, and it’s high time for it to be debunked. It is the presence of a mindset that believes women are inferior drivers to men or that they lack the appropriate skills and response time to react while driving.
It is quite the opposite of the myth. Women are better drivers, not just in terms of road sense, but they are more cautious in driving too. Men, with their statistics, have shown to be more reckless, with the fault lying in either one or both of them in the case of an accident. A ‘New York Times’ article mentioned the conduction of a British study from 2005 – 2015 which showed the following statistics,
Not just this, widespread organizations are also looking to recruit women drivers like ‘Careem’ and not only based on gender diversity but also because women drive safer.
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