Suggest OddsWoman vs. Man: Who’s a Better Driver?
IStock Photo 6807031 © Ivan Meteev
It’s a long-perpetuated stereotype: women are bad drivers. In popular culture they are seen as erratic, nervous, and distracted, and they just plain can’t handle a large piece of machinery like a car. But statistics show otherwise. According to a large 2007 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, women are actually much safer drivers than men.
The odds that a female driver will be involved in a crash that results in an injury in a year are 1 in 77.38, while the same odds for a male driver are 1 in 59.92. For crashes that cause fatalities, the difference between the sexes is even more striking: the odds a female driver will be involved in a fatal car crash in a year are 1 in 7,361 compared to 1 in 2,526 for a male driver. And for all fatal car crashes, the odds that one of the drivers is male are 1 in 1.35 (74%), and the odds one of them is female are 1 in 3.89.
A 2007 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that more men than women die in car crashes each year. Men do tend to drive more than women, but this doesn’t account for all of the difference. The study found that men are more likely to be in severe accidents that involve fatalities.
The insurance industry has long been in on this secret: men, especially young men, are generally considered higher-risk drivers than women. Why such a difference between men and women? Experts say that men drive more aggressively, take more risks, and are more likely to drink while driving.
According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), car accidents not only cause a great deal of injury and death—nearly 43,000 deaths per year in this country—but they also come at a high cost to society, an estimated $162 billion in the US, which amounts to $1,051 per person. If more women took the wheel, it might be a benefit to all of us.
Of course, these numbers don’t tell us anything about who gets lost while driving more often, nor can they reveal who stops to ask for directions and who refuses. So there are some gender stereotypes that will have to live on.
Comments (5)
lol statistics based on what exactly? you can't base that poll on all the factors, try rasing a poll on who takes longer to park the car on average, how many accidents there are after you remove all the joy-riding chavs... just type in youtube women drivers, and see for yourself that women can take over 14 minutes to park a freaking car...
report abusesorry ladies, I know most of you can drive - but pretty much all the idiots I see on the road are women, elderly, young, doesn't matter. The reason for the high male fatality rate is because of the guys who always go racing, if women were also doing those speeds theyd have similar accidents, but it's those male chavs who make the rest of us pay the stupid high insurance rates.
I, too, would have liked to have seen these numbers corrected to average miles driven per sex. A 1998 article seems to suggest that (at least at that time) men drove significantly more miles than women-- http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/1998/06/980618032130.htm. More miles = more accidents?
report abuseAs a Massachusetts driver, I think you missed the biggest surprise of all. Massachusetts fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled was 0.76 in 2007 -- lowest in the nation. The % decline in fatalities from 2000 to 2007 was 52%, second only to Vermont (54%). Do we chalk this up to forgiving roads, global climate change, or to a really good medical response system?
report abuseVehicle miles traveled is derived from gasoline consumption and known discrete data points (limited-access tool roads, mainly) so there is no national tally on % of vehicle miles driven by males or females. Limited out-of-date data always suggested that women had slightly higher accident rates (per mile driven) but that men had much-more-severe accidents.
Data in this report (see table 63, page 98) suggest that the severity pattern holds for deaths (F to M driver odds 1:2.89, which is certainly over any data we have on F to M vehicle miles driven). But injury-only crashes (F to M 1.284) and damage (F to M 1.42) show a lower injury rate than damage rate for female drivers. Perhaps women are more likely to use seatbelts. Or maybe, just maybe, the patterns are changing as women become more like men in lifestyle.
"It’s a long-perpetuated stereotype..." Long perpetuated because what you see everyday passes the "smell" test. Telling me women are better drivers goes against what I see everyday. They may be slower and more cautious, but I've found this actually negatively affects traffic when they are slow and cautious in the "fast" lane. They don't seem to get that they share the road. Entitlement to "their" portion takes precedence over everything else happening on the road. They will slow down to 30 on the freeway trying to merge to the right, 1/2 block before their exit, instead of staying at 55 and merging a mile before their exit. In addition to these "one-off" examples, there are many fewer licensed women than men. And in many cases, even the licensed ones usually are in the passenger seat when going somewhere with their significant other. Men drive many more miles per year than women. As more women drive more miles in our current society, it would be expected their accidents and tickets pick up as well. From 10 years ago, women had more accidents per mile driven than men (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/06/980618032130.htm). So in other words, if there were only 100 drivers in the world and 99 were Asian and 1 was American, what are the odds that an accident involves an Asian? So the insurance company charges Asians more, not because of the likelihood of the accident, but because they can. If the American does get into an accident, what is the likelihood it will involve an Asian? So you can then see the point of useless stats showing overall numbers? You have to go with the percentage of the group tested. Stats 101. But into this, you also have to figure the number of women who get out of tickets after being pulled over for a violation. It is ridiculous. Perhaps they should be entitled to preferred treatment by officers, but when you use the number of tickets per miles driven as your proof of non-violation, it is laughable...download the paper and read it (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=961967 Excerpt-Page 20: The findings show that age and gender are determinants of the likelihood of a speeding ticket. The likelihood of a fine decreases with age. Females are less likely to receive a fine than males. The interaction effect between the gender and age variables shows that females are more likely to receive a citation when they are older. Ceteris paribus, young females have the lowest probability of receiving a speeding ticket. The coefficients on female and the interaction between female and age show that the benefit of being female, in terms of reducing the likelihood of a fine, disappears around age seventy-five.)
report abuse>Men do tend to drive more than women, but this doesn’t account for all of the difference.
report abuseSays that study? Sez you? Almost every study of accidents--this one included--fails to account effectively for exposure: miles driven. So the results are meaningless.
I'd hoped to find some good analysis here of real odds, but am disappointed.