Whenever my husband and I are out for the eve, he almost always winds up in the driver’s seat on the way home.
It turns out that with age, I don’t get drunk when I drink, I simply get tired. In an effort to be quasi-responsible, he’ll temper his drinking early enough to sober up before driving home. And if need be, I’ll be the one to down a double espresso and then take the wheel–wide awake.
Interestingly, there all kinds of reasons why one partner or the other takes control of the wheel. In a post for the New York Times Freakonomics blog, Eric A. Morris reported on over 400 comments he received in response to a previous post titled, “Are Women Being Taken For A Ride?”
Morris writes that some people said alcohol consumption plays a major role in the decision about who’s driving. Some women wrote they take control of the wheel more on “leisure trips” because their husband or boyfriend drinks more than they do.
On the other hand, a couple of people reported that the man drives more because he’s better at holding his booze (or maybe she gets tired?)
And my favorite response: one woman wrote that “she takes the wheel more frequently because she is far more adept than her husband at evading traffic tickets.”
