As you know, we often post on the intersection of culture and the automotive ecosystem. Well, part of life is — err, um — procreation. In other words, sex. And cars and sex have always gone together. Sex helps to sell cars; cars can take you on that honeymoon trip to Niagara Falls; and they can take you on that divorce trip to Reno. If I say much more I will get in trouble, so let’s go to the chart:
The source is A New Look at Sexual Behavior in Moving Vehicles Reported by Midwestern College Students, by C. Struckman-Johnson, P. Anderson & G. Smeaton, 2026.
The red slice represents respondents asserting they have indulged in sex in a moving vehicle; the blue slice represents respondents who somehow thought cars were just for transportation.
It’s a “new” look in the title because a few years back Struckman-Johnson and other co-authors had surveyed college students as to whether they had engaged in SPV (sex in a parked vehicle), and now they have moved on to moving violations, as it were.1 The SPV percentage was about 60%, twice the level of the riskier SMV.
The underlying paper is a treasure, but is definitely not safe for work, as it discusses in very forthright terms the variety of sex acts that sum to the total. Perusing it definitely beats reading about the latest developments in lidar tech. You may want to have Paradise by the Dashboard Light playing while you page through it.
Frankly, I had thought both SPV and SMV were in decline in America (my opinion only, not based on research2), but the authors explained why this may not be the case, in a couple of paragraphs which I will reprint in lightly-edited form here. These words quite efficiently demonstrate once again how the automobile and American society are intertwined:
The most common sexual activity associated with vehicles is “parking”–having sex in a parked or stationary vehicle in an off-road location. In the 20th century, classic locations for parking were isolated country roads and fields, drive-in theaters, and parking areas on college campuses. Parking was considered to be in decline by the turn of the century due to rising gas prices, the shrinking size of cars, and the availability of dorm rooms on campus and residential bedrooms of working parents. However, factors thought to continue the utility of car sex3 were prolonged courtship and delay of marriage, the expanding hookup culture, and the growth of the internet and on-line dating which tend to promote sexual connections that require travel.
I can only imagine what this chart will look like in ten years, as autonomous vehicle technology becomes widespread. Hand’s-off driving, indeed….
I cannot tell you how hard it was for me to refrain from printing several dozen off-color puns that came to mind when writing this post. I’ll let you generate your own.
I truly admire an academic turn of phrase such as “the utility of car sex.” I imagine that surveyed participants use wording such as this when discussing with their partners whether they might indulge in SMV on a given drive: “That would seem to have quite high utility, honey, wouldn’t you agree?”
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