Why do lefties die sooner

Halpern and Coren also found that about 7. For automobile accidents, the corresponding figures were 5. Machines designed for right-handers are often difficult or awkward for left-handers to use, she said.

Left-handers have an obvious disadvantage in driving, Coren added. When faced with a sudden threat, many right-handers reflexively throw their left hand high and right hand low across their face. While driving a car, this typically results in the wheel being turned clockwise, or away from oncoming traffic and to the side of the road. For a left-hander, the reflex action of the arms is reversed, turning the car into oncoming traffic. Critics argued that many facets of the study need to be examined before the results can be fully accepted.

Searleman noted, for example, that only half the mailed questionnaires were returned, and that may have created bias. Other critics, such as UCLA neuropsychologist Paul Satz, charged that the results could be because of some unrelated factor such as poverty or illness. The "generally" right-handed population, he asserts, lasts on average to The generally left-handed live to just Perplexingly, though, "extremely" left-handed people have an average death age of And the ambidextrous fare best of all: their average age of death is just short of This may have nothing to do with the life expectancy of left-handed people.

It is probably due to the practice, common until recent decades, of forcing left-handed people to write with their right hands in school. Because the population of left-handers is younger, the left-handed people who die will, on average, be younger than right-handed people who die, says Hartge. Coren denies that historical practices of forcing left-handers to change could have produced his data. He says that it is very difficult to persuade people to switch hands, and even then, the people may write with the right hand and do most other things as they did before.

It seemed to work best with girls. Among children younger than nine who were subjected to these pressures, 60 per cent of the girls switched, but only 20 per cent of the boys. Nothing like this exaggerated scenario ever occurred in reality - but the number of people identifying as left-handed did grow dramatically during the 20th Century. So the idea that left-handers die nine years earlier than right-handers is a myth. What about non-fatal injuries?

Should we be worried about people like Claire Allen struggling in the kitchen with knives designed for the right-handed? Or my own mother for that matter, if she were forced to use right-handed scissors?

You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook. Left-handers were once mistakenly regarded as cack-handed. Obama is the third left-handed US president since ambidextrous Ronald Reagan.