Gender Fender Bender

The debate has been raging since the birth of the automotive industry, who are better at driving, men or women? For the sake of peace, I’m going to suggest that both men and women can be excellent drivers, each with their own individual strengths and weaknesses. However, some believe firmly that their sex is indeed the safer on the roads but what do the statistics say?

Parking and passing the driving test

We are soon to have more women on the roads than men than ever before in history with a 23% growth in female numbers compared to 9% for men over the last decade or so. But when it comes to parking, it does seem to be the men who have the edge and it’s a biological fact that men have better spatial awareness. During the driving test, twice as many errors were made during reverse parking by women than men – 3,367 mistakes for the girls vs 1,652 for the boys. So, it’s 1-0 to the men at the moment.

Passing first time, the comparison is a bit closer with 48% of men and 44% of women getting their licence on the first attempt. Surveys of the past have also revealed that it takes women roughly 2 months longer to feel test ready than it does for the men. So, it’s 2-0 to the guys currently.

Crash rates and near misses

Finally, we have some good news for the ladies as women have fewer crashes. Perhaps women are just that little bit more cautious. 57% of men had been involved in a collision compared to just 44% of women.  46% of men had admitted to experiencing a close call with a cyclist or pedestrian  compared to 35% of women. 68% of women have a clean driving licence compared to 64% of men, which is pretty close top be honest but we’ll let the ladies have this one. For all those dings and bumps, try Car Body Repairs Swansea and visit http://www.lmvrepairs.co.uk/.

Men have been shown statistically to be more prone to losing concentration by messing about with stereos or mobile phones, speeding or verbally abusing other drivers. Women are 12% less likely to speed than male drivers, this information coming from black box recorders in the vehicles of 19,000 drivers. They were also 11% less likely to brake hard meaning that they had a smoother and perhaps more safety conscious approach but let’s face it, these figures are not particularly high are they?

So who really is the safer driver?

Maybe we should say, for arguments sake, that men are good at some things and women are good at other things. These are sweeping generalisations though as there will be plenty of excellent and appalling drivers of both sexes. It has been said that men have a better understanding of the mechanics of driving well but are more likely to push the vehicle and increase their risk of being involved in an incident. Women, on the whole, seem to have a better appreciation of risk then their male counterparts. Let’s just make sure we drive safely, whatever our gender.

Summary

This article compares male and female drivers using UK survey data. It looks at differences in parking ability, driving test pass rates, crash and collision rates, and behaviours such as speeding, hard braking and distraction from phones or stereos. It concludes that men and women each have different strengths and weaknesses behind the wheel, rather than either sex being definitively safer.

Questions this article raises

• Do these statistics still hold true for drivers today?
• How much do these differences come down to biology versus experience?
• Would the results differ if the same drivers were tested again outside a test setting?