Not too long ago, I was driving alone through the Michael Garron Hospital parking garage in search of a spot. I began to feel as if something was out of the ordinary but could not identify what. It was a feeling I’d had before in a hospital parking lot. I sensed something curiously odd but that didn’t fit into an existing category. In German, you might call this “eigenartig” – loosely translated as “strangely peculiar”.
So, I drove around with my “eigenartig” in the passenger seat, passing other cars searching for an elusive open spot. The feeling grew and grew and then, in an instant, the spell was broken.
I realized that almost every driver was female, at least in cars with more than a one occupant. The passengers were male and female, old and young but it was the women who were driving.
This was curious. According to Transport Canada, the split between male and female licensed drivers is almost even – 51.6 per cent male and 48.4 per cent female. In America, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are more female licensed drivers (119 million) than male ones (116 million). Statistically speaking, the hospital-bound chauffeurs should have been divided evenly between the genders.
Yet almost every driver in the hospital parking garage was a woman and all these women had the same thousand-yard stare. It was a look that said, “Why am I always the one doing this?”
The hospital parking garage is the only place on earth where the vast majority of drivers are women.
Was there a scientific explanation for this strange discovery?
Researchers have done a lot of research into the difference between male and female drivers, much of it related to safety. Women have a higher rate of low-speed, minor impact collisions while men have a higher incidence of high-speed and fatal collisions. Globally, males are three times more likely to be killed in a road collision. This may have something to do with the fact that men drive more. In the United States, for instance, men drive about 26,635 kilometres a year while women drive around 16,328 kilometres.
Those are interesting statistics, but they don’t explain why women dominate the hospital parking lot. In my wholly unscientific opinion, it has more to do with the division of labour than with female mastery of hospital parking lots.
No one in their right mind wants to drive someone to the hospital. It’s a horrible experience. When it comes to activities that no one in their right mind would want to do, society tends to reserve most of those for women. And so, when it comes to driving ailing family and friends to highly stressful hospital visits and parking in exorbitantly expensive hospital parking garages, women have a lock. Not because they’re better at it but because not one else wants to do it.
It’s all yours, ladies!
Let me be clear. I am not saying that only women drive friends and family to the hospital. Of course, men do as well. I’m just saying when it comes to getting stuck driving friends and family, women are worse at getting out of it. Most men, if I am any indication, hate going to the hospital so much that they have developed a sixth sense, an ability to sense when a hospital visit is about to be mentioned.
For instance:
My Sister: “Someone has to…”
Me: (interrupting) “I have an important meeting on that day at that time.”
My Sister: “… take mom to the hospital next Thursday for some tests.”
Me: “I wish I could go but like I said, I have a meeting on Thursday.”
As I left Michael Garron that day, the mystery solved, a truth settled. Sooner or later we’re all likely to be in the passenger seat heading toward some hospital parking garage. I’ve resolved to be extra kind to the women in my life. Maybe I’ll even break with tradition and offer to drive next time someone needs a lift to the hospital. I’ll consider it an investment in my future.