"If Men were more important, it wouldn't be Women & Children First"

Family vacations. Necessary. Heartwarming. Etcetera. But on the darker side, family vacations have the potential to be quite boring. So, I'm sitting in a hotel room watching Cash Cab and I've seen enough episodes to come up with a testable hypothesis. See, Ben Bailey is the host, and at the end of every ride, he hands money to the group, but he always hands money to the person sitting in the same seat. This seat is the one closest to the left side of the cab. The person is almost always male when the group is of mixed gender. This person is also the lead answerer, so his (and potentially hers, though in the last 17 games I've watched, it has never once been the case if a man was in the cab) answer is the final answer. It strategically makes sense, since the game show host and driver can't easily access the person sitting directly behind him. But still, I couldn't help wonder if there was something more nefarious at play on the mean streets of New York City. Perhaps Ben Bailey is a subtle sexist.

But no, Ben Bailey isn't the culprit here. Etiquette is. "Ladies first," as it were, dictates that women enter the cab first and have a far greater chance of sitting all the way within the cab and unable to be the lead answerer and the main receiver of prize money.