Women driven to stop more for errands

Men avoid 'trip chains'

Meagan Fitzpatrick
CanWest News Service

Men and women do have different driving habits, according to a new study that shows women squeeze more stops into their daily commute than men.

Men tend to drive directly to and from work whereas women are more likely to make multiple stops along the way, often to pick up and drop off children at school or to run other errands.

The Statistics Canada study, published Monday in the winter 2007 EnviroStats, examined "trip chaining," the practice of making one or more stops while getting from point A to point B.

An example of a trip chain is leaving home in the car, stopping at Tim Hortons for a caffeine fix, dropping the children off at school and picking up dry-cleaning, all on the way to work. That would be considered a four-stage trip.

Men were more likely than women to make one-stage trips -- about 45 per cent of their car trips were that type, compared to 39 per cent for women.

For two-stage trips there was equality between the sexes, but beyond two stages, women ruled.

"Men tend to predominate in the simplest trips," said Gord Baldwin, one of the report's authors. "They are only going to work, only going to home."

Women, on the other hand, tend to have a much busier drive.

"The more complex the trip, the more stops between home and work or between work and home, the more probability you're going to find women as the driver," said Baldwin.

"That is usually my life," says Calgary's Gloria Mensah. "Men have it much easier. They just may stop to pick up their laundry or get some gas while women have to pick the kids up from school and get the groceries. . . ."

Ken Lee, who works for a Calgary information technology firm, said his trips are simple. "Straight from home to work for me," Lee said Monday.

The study, which used data from the 2005 Canadian Vehicle Survey, found a higher percentage of women than men drove to schools and day-care centres and to stores as their first stop after setting out on their morning commute.

When the first stop after leaving home was a leisure, entertainment or recreation facility or restaurant, 62 per cent of those stops were made by men.

© The Calgary Herald 2007