Is congestion a woman’s issue?

This recent piece from one of the authors of the Hudson Institute was published in the New York Sun 2007.02.09. Diana Furchtgott-Roth knows her stuff – this is a myth-free discussion about congestion pricing.

I was intrigued by:

Southern California's SR 91 has express lanes with electronic tolling at variable prices. These lanes — which are used by all income classes and are particularly popular with women due to their speed and lower accident rate — carry twice as many vehicles as free lanes during hours with the heaviest traffic. And vehicles go three times faster than in free lanes.

Until this, I haven’t encountered a mention of a gender preference for uncongested roads. And I don’t get the correlation or causality re “[higher] speed and lower accident rate”. I thought men liked speed more than – or certainly as much as – women might. And don’t we all like lower accident rates?

I do know that congestion robs motorists (and surface-transit users) of family time (among many other things). This could be a reason for a gender-bias on the assumption that women tend to treasure family time more than men do…

…or maybe women are smarter.