Data has revealed that women are better drivers than men. Picture: File
Pretoria - Women are better drivers than men, new telematics data has revealed.
This was one of the conclusions from customer-incident data released by the stolen-vehicle-recovery and fleet intelligence company Netstar.
The company said this was another recognition of the important role women played in maintaining society’s functioning and disproved patriarchal stereotypes of bad “woman drivers”.
It further showed that men in general were worse at adhering to safe driving practices.
Netstar chief technology officer Cliff de Wit said the findings indicated that their female customers drove better than their male counterparts during the four months surveyed.
“The data was gathered using Netstar telematics – a combination of vehicle sensors, GPS and telecommunications technology, and supports emerging offerings like usage-based vehicle insurance and underwriting.”
De Wit said the new data calculated registered incidences of vehicle impacts as well as harsh braking, acceleration and cornering as a percentage of total male and female Netstar customers.
“On every metric, women performed better than men.
“Registered vehicle impacts, for example hitting potholes, kerbs or other vehicles, by women customers represented 1.3% of the total number of the company’s female customer base during the period measured, compared to 1.4% for men.”
De Wit said in terms of harsh braking, registered incidents represented 16.9% of female members and 22.8% of male members.
“The numbers for harsh acceleration were 4.5% for women and 10% for men. For harsh cornering, the proportions were 13.2% women versus 18.8% men.
“The data provided direct, real-time information to help insurers understand client driving behaviour, which allowed them to set relevant premiums and to incentivise safe and more sustainable driving.”
De Wit said despite the outcome of such studies, they encouraged drivers of all gender identities to drive safely and to use their telematics data to improve their performance and protect lives.
De Wit noted that the data supported the findings of a recent survey of road fatality data in the UK.
The study, titled “How does mode of travel affect risks posed to other road users? An analysis of English road fatality data, Incorporating gender and road type”, by Injury Prevention publication of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research, found a large gender imbalance in terms of driving performance and the risk posed by male drivers.
“Men pose more risk than women and are more likely to use more dangerous modes.
“For cars and vans, the risk posed per kilometre driven by men is double that posed by women.
“Much literature has linked men’s relatively high crash involvement to gender differences in risk-taking, although the nature of this relationship is still debated.”
The data found there were more fatalities per billion kilometres travelled among men than there were among women.
This was true for all vehicle types – cars, vans, lorries, motorcycles, buses and bicycles.
Pretoria News