Stereotypes about the personality of drivers of certain types of cars are not so much about what’s happening on the road as what’s going on in our heads.BMW
We were having coffee and catching up at a family gathering when a cousin steered the conversation to cars. “What is it,” she asked, “with BMW drivers?” By “it” she meant “wrong.” Wrong as in awful, rude, horrible. This was not the first time I’ve been asked this kind of question. When people find out I write about driving, they frequently want to know why “this” or “that” kind of driver is the scourge of the highway. I’ve been asked what’s wrong with pretty much every kind of car/driver combination on the road.
The belief that terrible drivers own a specific type of automobile is universal and unshakable.
And – like most universal and unshakable beliefs – it’s wrong.
What is it with BMW drivers? Well, the world wants to make them the villain. The stereotype most likely goes back to the 1970s when BMW drivers were painted as rich, preppy elitists. What’s not to hate? The stigma survives. A 2021 survey by Moneybarn in the United Kingdom found BMW owners were by far the most disliked drivers on the road. Almost 40 per cent said BMW drivers were the worst and “most likely to cause an accident.” Audi came a distant second at 14 per cent.
Insurify, an American car insurance comparison website, released a report on the “Rudest Drivers” in 2021. This followed a more clinical process than it sounds. Insurance applicants must disclose their make and model as well as any violations (for example, failure to yield or tailgating) on their driving records over the past seven years. Insurify’s data science team searched their database of more than four million applications to “identify the ten car models with the rudest drivers in 2021.”
BMW drivers were the rudest in 2020 and Kia Stinger drivers in 2021. Last year, Audi A4 Allroad drivers where second rudest and BMW 4-Series were in third. While such surveys are diverting, I don’t believe they carry much weight. Perhaps law enforcement adheres to the anti-BMW stereotype and issues more tickets to those drivers. There is too much bad driving and too many bad drivers to lump them all in one make and model.
We buy cars that reflect our own personal brands. Nobody ever went into a dealership and said, “Do you have anything for an arrogant, insecure, self-aggrandizing creep?” Oddly enough, there is consensus on who the best drivers are – they’re the drivers who drive the same car as we do. In terms of Jungian analysis, the brands we vilify are the “shadow” cars that embody the repressed weaknesses, desires and shortcomings we find unacceptable.
Our driving stereotypes are not so much about what’s happening on the road as what’s going on in our heads. They act as an automotive Rorschach test and reveal more about our subconscious biases than they do about the drivers we abhor. In the same way we label anyone who is more sexually active than we are “promiscuous,” we cook up defective driving personalities to explain why driving is such a frustrating experience. We find a scapegoat.
For instance, let’s say you’re not very handy and don’t like fixing chains to your car and hauling things. You may project this bias onto pickup truck drivers (who, by and large, like to haul things, know the right end of a hammer and may or may not enjoy commercials in which burly men chain things to their pickups and then haul them). Every time a pickup driver changes lanes without signalling you leap on the transgression and declare it more proof that pickup drivers are the worst drivers in the world. Then you file it away for future use.
And so, it goes. There’s a stereotype to be slapped on any automobile you can find. Here are a few variations on those I’ve heard:
Range Rover – Demented soccer mom.
Tesla – Sanctimonious moneyed tech-nerd.
Porsche – Mid-life crisis on four wheels.
Ford F-150 – MAGA hat in glove compartment.
Toyota – What if bland got bored and became a car?
Honda Civic – Confident, encouraging and compassionate, is not how you would describe anyone who drives a Honda Civic.
VW – Something not right.
Mini Cooper Countryman ALL4 – Universally reviled columnist.
None of these stereotypes are true (except, perhaps, the last one) but they get lobbed around all the time.
So, next time you want to blame a car – stop yourself – and blame the person. Leave the automobiles out of it. As I like to say, the fault lies not in our cars, but in ourselves that we are drivers.