"David Kerber" <ns_dkerber@ns_ids.net> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:I still think there's a difference in style between girls' poor driving and boys' poor driving. I
think girls tend to simply not pay as much attention to their driving, getting into accidents
because they were distracted by socializing with others in the car, looking around, etc. My wife
simply doesn't look far enough down the road to be able to anticipate actions which might be
required to avoid problems. IMO (based on being a teenage boy at one time), boys' driving problems
tend to be caused more by an aggressive driving style, speeding, swerving around other cars and
the like.
I'm in complete agreement with you on this part. Boys are probably more reckless and girls more
inattentive, but I don't have any stats to prove anything, so it's just opinion based on observance.
But both boys and girls are distracted by passengers at similar rates. Here's an interesting snippet
for you courtesy of hwysafety.orgteen passengers.pdfOpen ↗
"Four recent North American studies have quantified the crash risk associated with teenage drivers
transporting teenage passengers (Aldridge et al., 1999; Chen et al., 2000; Doherty et al., 1998;
Preusser et
al., 1998). Collectively, findings from these studies indicate that the presence of
passengers strongly
increases crash risk for teenage drivers; the more passengers the greater the risk. For
example, in one
study the presence of one passenger almost doubled the fatal crash risk compared with driving alone.
With two or more passengers, the fatal crash risk was five times as high as driving alone
(Doherty et al.,
1998). Results were similar for male and female teenage drivers. There is excess risk for
young drivers
with passengers both day and night. For older drivers, on the other hand, passengers either
have no effect
on crash risk or a beneficial effect, with drivers less likely to crash if there are passengers in
the vehicle.
Part of the increased injury risk with passengers present could be because higher vehicle
occupancy by itself increases the opportunity for injury in a crash. However, there is
increased risk for
young drivers with passengers present in studies that are based on involvement in crashes
(Doherty et al.,
1999) or deaths to drivers per million trips (Chen et al., 2000), where the influence of
high vehicle
occupancy on the likelihood of injury is not a factor."
Perhaps my kids shouldn't get their licenses until AFTER they make it through this critical period.
Another study showed that teenage drivers had higher accident rates than adult drivers (30+) who had
the same amount of experience. I'd worry about what confounding factors may be affecting their
results. WHY didn't these drivers get their licenses until their thirties? What kinds of people are
these? They are certainly outside the statistical norm. This may be skewing the results of the
study, but it is interesting food for thought. I wonder if they spent those years as cyclists...
-Buck
