If you ask people whether men or women are better drivers, you get a lot of conflicting answers. Much of the time, you will find men saying that they are the best drivers. They claim to have superior skills or simply to be better at their craft, and they believe this keeps them safe.
As evidence of this, you’ll find that they also rate their confidence as drivers much higher. When women were asked if they were very confident, only about 74% said that they were. For men, the same was true of 82%. So this shows that men certainly believe that they can drive well, but can they?
Women are safer drivers
It may depend on your metric for what makes someone a better driver. If you’re looking at safety, which many would argue should be the only thing that matters behind the wheel, then it is very clear that women are superior drivers.
For instance, one study looked at individuals who tended to be involved in fatal accidents. In a full 71% of the cases, men were those who passed away in these crashes. It is simply much more dangerous to be a man on the road, and this reflects on the way that men tend to drive.
One interesting thing to consider, however, is that men may also tend to drive more often. There are many couples who will report that the man usually drives when both the man and woman are in the car at the same time. So, some of the reason for the higher fatality rate for men could simply be that it’s more likely that they’re going to be driving to start with, and that may naturally increase the exposure to fatality.
To counter this, though, experts have also found that men are riskier drivers. They will make more mistakes or even intentionally take risks – such as breaking the speed limit or passing aggressively – that they do not need to take. Since they do this more often than women, that increases the odds that they will be the one to cause a fatal crash.
Have you lost a loved one?
If someone else has caused an accident and you’ve been seriously injured or lost a loved one, make sure you know what legal steps you can take.
