> I don't know if there is any research into [needing to
    > reorient maps when driving].

There's a really good description of this and other brain attributes correlated with gender or male homosexuality in the BBC show "The Making of Me - John Barrowman". This specific part starts around 6m30s in: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6a063_the-making-of-me-joh...

Here's an article about it in New Scientist, "Gay men read maps like women": https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7069-gay-men-read-map...

That's not to suggest that you're either a homosexual man or a heterosexual woman based on this datapoint alone. There's of course plenty of people who don't fall into those groups who prefer to read maps that way, just to answer your question about whether there's research about it. Yeah, there's at least some research showing that spatial recognition is indicative of gender & sexual orientation.