Male Drivers Are More Likely To Be In A Road Collision With Pedestrians

Following a new report from The Guardian, it has been discovered that male drivers in Great Britain are three times more likely than their female counterparts to be involved in a road accident that kills or injures a pedestrian.

Government road accident and journey data revealed that in an 18-month period between the start of 2020 and the first half of 2021, 4363 male drivers in Great Britain were involved in car crashes that either killed or injured pedestrians compared to 1473 females.

The figures equate to exactly 2.8 serious road accidents that involved a pedestrian getting injured or killed for every 10 million journeys completed by male drivers, compared to 1.04 collisions for female motorists.

Deeper scrutiny from data collected from 2002 further revealed that the number of male drivers getting involved in collisions had grown steadily from 2.2 crashes per 10 million journeys in 2010.

It is also important to note that this data does not include instances where the gender of the driver was not noted down.

Even though the rate and the total number of collisions have steadily declined over the decade, the recent pandemic lockdown period has the lowest numbers because of the reduced number of pedestrians, as well as private and motor trade traffic using the public highways.

However, the gap between the number of accidents involving male and female drivers has grown during this same period.

A male driver in 2010 was 2.2 times more likely to injure or kill a pedestrian as opposed to a female driver. But during the first half of 2021, this figure has increased to 2.8 times as likely.

Consequently, this means that pedestrians are more likely to be seriously injured or killed than be slightly injured when a man is driving as compared to when a woman is behind the wheel.

It is also estimated that about 33% of accidents that involved pedestrians either resulted in serious injury or death when a male driver was behind the steering wheel, as compared to 28% for their female counterparts.

The small difference between the two figures could be down to the difference in vehicles that are used for commuting.

It was further revealed that one in four fatal accidents involving pedestrians in 2021 was caused by either a truck, van, or bus.

Apart from being more likely to fatally hurt pedestrians, male drivers were also discovered to be more likely to die during a collision.

According to the report by the Department for Transport, 78% of all the people who died in traffic accidents in 2021 were men.

Following a survey by road safety charity Brake in 2020, it was found out that men were three times more likely to break the speed limit barrier than women, with 30% of them further admitting to driving above 100mph as compared to 9% of female drivers who admitted to doing so.

Men have inherently known to be risk takers, which is probably all taken into consideration by the local insurance broker when quoting for either a private or motor trade insurance policy.