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Driving Superstitions
What's the Most Common Driving Superstition?
BY DAVE ROOS
Superstitions are
hard to shake.
Who
doesn't feel a little luckier when they find a penny on the sidewalk (heads up,
of course), or would brazenly walk under a ladder on Friday the 13th?
Superstitious
rituals are most powerful when there's underlying fear and anxiety involved.
So, it shouldn't be a surprise that Americans fall back on all sorts of crazy
superstitions when they drive.
According
to a recent national survey by the car insurance marketplace Netquote, 30
percent of American women and 35 percent of American men hold their breath
while driving in tunnels (the most popular superstition).
The
second-most popular was lifting feet when passing over a bridge or railroad.
About
a quarter of respondents carried some kind of good-luck item in their cars,
like a rosary or rabbit's foot.
"We
were expecting superstitious practices on the road to be pretty uncommon, so it
was surprising to discover that over one in five men and women drive with some
sort of lucky charm in their vehicle," says Jason Hargraves, managing editor of NetQuote via email.
In
a separate survey, Netquote asked drivers about their most common
driving-related fears, including some classic urban legends. The biggest fear
by far for both sexes was fake cops pulling people over.
Nearly
half of woman and more than a third of men shared this fear. While such crimes
are extremely rare, they do happen, so drivers shouldn't hesitate to ask to see
a police officer's identification if something doesn't feel right.
In
general women tended to have more fears while driving than men. For example,
more than twice as many female drivers (22.5 percent) were afraid of someone
hiding in the back seat of the car as compared to men (11 percent).
But
slightly more men than women believed that car thieves jam coins into a door
handle so that it stays open after the driver thinks that he's locked it.
NOW THAT'S REAL
For
all of their driving-related fears and superstitions, a shocking percentage of
Americans forgo the best safety precaution on the road — car insurance.
According to the Insurance
Information Institute, 13 percent of all motorists in 2015 were driving without
insurance with the worst offenders in Florida, where more than 26 percent of
drivers were uninsured.
Dave Roos
CONTRIBUTING
WRITER
Dave is a
freelance journalist who has contributed hundreds of articles to HowStuffWorks
since 2007. Raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dave attended Duke University
where he earned the B.A. in comparative religious studies that has served him
so well. Dave began freelancing when he and his wife moved to Mexico in 2003,
publishing articles about Mexican food and culture in The New York Times, the
Los Angeles Times and Newsweek. Nearly 15 years and three kids later, Dave and
his family recently moved back to Mexico and just might stay a while.
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