Young Male vs. Young Female

When it comes to car crashes there’s a link to one’s gender – at least if you’re young.

Gender is often related to what type of severe or fatal crash a young male or young female driver will be involved in, according to a new study by Kansas State University.

The study found that young female drivers have more crashes at intersections and collisions with pedestrians than do young male drivers, who have more off-road and nighttime accidents than young female drivers.

The university’s Sunanda Dissanayake, professor of civil engineering, and Niranga Amarasingha, doctoral student in civil engineering, looked at the gender differences and similarities of young drivers involved in all motor vehicle crashes in Kansas across five years. Their findings may help reduce the number and severity of these crashes by improving educational material used in young driver education courses.

“Age is one of the most important factors of highway safety, and crash data shows that young drivers and older drivers are involved in more crashes than any other age group,” Dissanayake said.

Researchers found several differences in the types of crashes between young men and women, including:

• Young females are 66 percent more likely to wear a seat belt than young males.
• Young females are 28 percent more likely to drive on a restricted license than young males.
• Young female drivers have more crashes at intersections and collisions with pedestrians.
• Young males have more crashes after sunset than young females.
• Young female drivers are more likely to be involved in crashes during weekdays, while young male drivers are more likely to be involved in crashes during the weekend.
• Young male drivers have more off-road crashes than young females.

“These findings show that gender differences do exist in young drivers when it comes to safety,” Dissanayake said.

Dissanayake and Amarasingha recently published their study, “Gender differences of young drivers on injury severity outcome of highway crashes,” in the Journal of Safety Research. It is part of a larger Kansas Department of Transportation, or KDOT, study about improving highway safety of young drivers.

The researchers analyzed data collected and included in the state transportation department’s crash database, which contains more than 150 variables about all police-reported motor vehicle crashes in Kansas. They looked at data from 2007-2011 – the most recent years available at the beginning of the study – for accidents involving drivers 16-24 years old.