Study finds severity of road accidents and injuries sustained vary according to sex of driver and passengers

The severity of traffic accidents and of the injuries sustained in them is influenced by whether the individuals involved are male or female. This issue has been studied previously by other researchers, but the results are not consistent across studies.

In general, most authors have reported that the risk of death or serious injury in traffic accidents is higher for men than for women. However, some researchers have found that in similar accidents women are more likely to be seriously injured or hospitalized.

A new UGR study shows that the risk of death or serious injury among passengers is statistically lower when the driver is female. The analysis also reveals that the risk of death or major injury is higher for female occupants.

The results of the study have been published in the open-access journal Heliyon.

The research was carried out by Pablo Lardelli-Claret, Eladio Jiménez-Mejías, Mario Rivera Izquierdo and Virginia Martínez Ruiz, all members of the University of Granada’s Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, as well as Nicolás Francisco Fernández-Martínez and Luis Miguel Martín de los Reyes, from the Andalusian School of Public Health (EASP).

The aim of the study was to try to clarify the relationship between the sex of the driver and passengers in vehicles involved in road traffic accidents and the severity of the injuries sustained.

To do so, the researchers studied the characteristics of the occupants (drivers and passengers) of the 171,230 passenger cars involved in traffic accidents in Spain between 2014 and 2020, as recorded in the National Register for Road Traffic Accident Victims, provided by the Spanish Directorate-General for Traffic (DGT).

Based on the data, the researchers designed two studies. In the first, they assessed the relationship between the sex of the driver and the occurrence of death or serious injury among the passengers. The second examined the relationship between the sex of the occupants in the vehicle and their risk of death or serious injury as a result of the accident.

The first study concluded that the risk of death or serious injury among passengers is 28% lower when the driver is female than when the driver is male.

The results suggest that this lower risk could largely be explained by safer driving by women. However, it could also partly be due to women preferring to drive in environments where the severity of an accident, should it occur, is lower (for example in urban areas compared to larger roads).

These results would therefore support the view, already put forward by other authors, that it would be desirable to attempt to “feminize” driving; in other words, for men to adopt driving styles that have until now been more typical among women.

However, the data analysis from the second study, which compared all the occupants of the vehicle involved in a crash, showed that the risk of death or serious injury was 20% higher for female occupants.

As the study took into account the position of the passengers and whether or not they were wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident, this result could be attributed to biological and body size differences, which would make women more vulnerable to the effects of the energy released in an accident.