It seems generally accepted that women are safer drivers than men because on average they have fewer road traffic accidents than men. The problem with this conclusion is it fails to take into account that men tend to drive more than women. A fairer measure of driver safety would be the rate of accidents per mile. Considering this, are women still safer drivers than men?
Auto insurance companies have studied this issue in great detail. The fact that, in general, women have lower auto insurance premiums than men leads me to accept that women are safer drivers.
I’m uncertain that women drive fewer miles. They commute to work like men do, and given the social constructs of this nation, they also do more driving on errands and running kids around town. Where did you pick up this info?
As I understand it, yes, women are safer per mile.
Somewhat paradoxically, men statistically have better spacial awareness and better control over the vehicle. However, possibly because of this, they also tend to drive faster and more aggressively, making them more likely to be in an accident, even on a per mile basis.
(this is also speaking statistically, not individually - as always, individuals will vary)
This study is older but I don’t know of any reasons why it still wouldn’t be broadly applicable. In short, male drivers are involved in 1.5 times the accident rate of females overall but that is largely driven by the high rate of fatalities among young male drivers. The fatal accident rate for both sexes becomes roughly equal as the drivers get older. However, female drivers in some age categories have a higher rate of non-fatal accidents and police interventions than males in the same cohort. Depending on your definition of “good driver”, it depends on what your criteria are and what age group you are looking at because this question is multi-factorial with age (both young and old) being one of the most significant factors.
“Analyses are also conducted according to the gender of the driver. Per mile
driven, men had about 1.5 times the risk of women of experiencing a fatal accident
1990 NPTS in 1990. The difference in rates between men and women the same age was most
pronounced among the younger age groups. By age 60, the fatal rates for men and
women were essentially the same. In contrast, women were found to have a 26%
higher injury involvement rate and a 16% higher rate in all police-reported accidents
per mile driven compared to men. Women had higher rates of non-fatal accidents
than men the same age for every age group 25 .and over.”
Accident statistics are generally published in terms of miles driven. Generally, women are involved in slightly more accidents, but men have many more fatal accidents.
Some cites:
This PDF from 1993 (University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute)
This collection of data from 2013 (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)
I believe this also varies with age - that is, at younger ages women are strikingly safer than men (on a per-mile-driven basis) but this gap narrows with time, and above a certain age men tend to be safer than women.
Responding to Frank, some reasons why men drive more miles:
Professional driving (trucking, taxis, delivery, etc.) is dominated by men;
Men participate in the labor force (and therefore commute) at a higher rate than women;
When men and women drive together, men are more often in the driver’s seat;
Running errands (mentioned by Frank) rarely involves long distances;
Men participate in “pleasure driving” more than women.
I don’t have cites ready to hand, but I can get them if you don’t believe these are true (gotta warn you though, I don’t subscribe to threads, so I may not be back for weeks).
A dumbed down version of my answer above is are you more worried about people getting killed or someone destroying the rear panel on your new BMW?
The group most likely to get killed and kill others is young males and they are also among the groups most likely to destroy your car at an intersection as well just by doing something aggressive and stupid. However, if you eliminate young drivers, you better keep an eagle eye out for female drivers, especially much older ones. Their talent is damaging your car and theirs without killing either of you.
I already gave a cite in my response above. Its units address this question directly. The units are per mile so there is no need to speculate like you are trying to. It isn’t that hard to read. There may be some more recent ones from the authors as well.
I’ll buy that, especially the last. I’m going for a “pleasure drive” tomorrow.
Sure, that’s a good point. In my opinion, someone who doesn’t kill me is a safer driver.
I wonder if smartphones have had any effect closing the gap between young male fatal accidents and young females? My intuition is that girls text more and would probably have more distracted accidents, but I haven’t seen any numbers in that area to check.
I think its a distribution kinda thing.
Are women sluttier than men? Well, depending on how you measure it the answer might be yes.
Take out the female prostitutes and the answer probably changes.
Take out male drives who drive extremely and IMO, male drivers probably have an edge.
One thing to keep in mind is that there is a huge difference between being good at raw driving skills and being a “good driver”. The big difference is judgement and risk assessment. Young male drivers are often better at the technical aspects than their female counterparts but basic driving doesn’t demand video-game like skills or the mechanical expertise of a NASCAR team like many of them seem to think. The biggest factors are taking unnecessary risks and being overconfident in the ability to handle a given situation. Younger males are generally terrible at both of those things and it drives the accident rate way up just because that factor alone. All it takes is one gross miscalculation for that misjudgment to become fatal or permanently debilitating.
The almost equally bad statistics for elderly versus young drivers are a different issue. That is largely due to declining mental ability, awareness and falling out of practice. Most of them don’t drive that many miles per year but they still manage to rack up way more than their fair share of carnage. I am not exactly sure what to do about that other than instituting more regular competency testing and pulling their license if they fail.
Next question - why is that legal? It sure as heck wouldn’t be legal, I presume, for insurance rates to be based on race or religion.
I cited the same study in my other post, and no, it doesn’t address why men drive more, it only demonstrates that they do. We already knew that.
Legally it’s not a different rate, it’s a bonus. Giving bonuses based on statistical data isn’t illegal.
Setting car insurance premiums on based on gender was recently outlawed in the European Union, although insurers can use other factors to achieve a similar effect (e.g. occupation).
Interestingly, female drivers are less likely than men to pass their driving test on their first attempt, at least in the UK: