Summary:

Insurance claims categorise car accidents by gender. Statistics show men go for speed and women are slower but distracted. Who loses the keys and can't read a map?

 

His And Hers - Car Facts

There is a famous quote about 'lies, damned lies and statistics' but a study of data gathered from 270,000 insurance claims has revealed very interesting information on which sex does what in their cars.

A spokesman for the research company said, "We hold a vast amount of data on accidents and wanted to see if there was a difference between how men and women crash. It soon became clear that there was."

The study shows predictable, almost stereotypical, results for men and for women when it comes to their car accidents.

Men are the more aggressive sex and take more risks. They generally drive at higher speeds than women, and have a 42 per cent higher likelihood of a serious head-on collision with another motorist than a woman driver.

Men also are 37 per cent more likely to crash into trees; 49 per cent more likely to run over an animal in their path; and, unfortunately, there is a 36 per cent greater chance of them mowing down a pedestrian on the sidewalk.

It seems inevitable that will all this male aggression and acceleration behind the wheel that men are found to have more convictions of driving offences than women.

Women's accident patterns are markedly different. They are 55 per cent more likely than men to 'reconfigure the bodywork' slightly in a car park, and for an accident at traffic lights the probability is 47 per cent higher. This is because their accidents mainly take place at lower speeds than men and when there is less space between vehicles.

Women are also 15 per cent more likely than men to run into a parked car, and 18 per cent more likely to collide with a bike rider or to have a shunt at a roundabout.

It would appear that women are more easily distracted whilst behind the wheel, hence their proclivity for bumping into parked cars and cyclists not to mention stationary cars at the lights.

The other thing women excel at over men is losing their car keys! The study reveals they have a 78 per cent more chance of that, or of locking themselves out of the car altogether.

It is surprising that men don't have more of a problem with losing keys since they don't carry a handbag, but those are the facts.

On the subject of handbags, women are 23 per cent more likely than men to have something stolen from their car, and this could be due to leaving the said handbag or other shopping bags on view.

Another unfortunate statistic for women drivers over men are their 22 per cent higher chance of driving past an open car door and hitting it.

But that's rather less dangerous than the picture painted of 64 per cent more men than women who experience electrical fires, 42 per cent more for other fires, and 29 per cent with a higher risk of an arson attack.

Presumably more men than women think they can walk, or drive, on water, because 52 per cent more of them imagine they can drive through a flood and come out the other side unscathed.

To put it in a nutshell, men are faster drivers and can be more reckless behind the wheel, and the fairer sex tend to lose concentration more easily and have more minor accidents.

Men do score better in map reading skills and parking. Male brains are better geared to envisaging the area available when backing into a parking space.