Man plus car mean danger! Ladies nice! So says self proclaimed “road safety and motoring services champion” GEM Motoring Assist (when was the competition?). That at least is the gist of the champ’s well-timed ‚ if imperfectly sustained ‚ attempt to ingratiate itself with female drivers around the Mother’s Day weekend,

GEM bloke David Williams contends: ”If you look at accident statistics, men come out worse than women.” Whilst men drive 30% further each year on average, the argument goes, World Health Organiation statistics show three times as many males killed in road collisions.

Ah, but were they driving at the time ‚ and were they responsible for said collisions? Williams thinks so. “Women are more likely to have low speed crashes,” he accepts, “especially at junctions, but these seldom lead to death or injury. Male crashes, on the other hand, are more often linked to risk taking and law breaking.”

Want more stats? “Department for Transport figures show that in 2006 87 per cent of those convicted of motoring offences in the UK were men,” says Williams, and “of those convicted for dangerous driving, 96 per cent were men.”

The problem, it seems, may be seated in the groin region. Men have hundreds of times more testosterone in their blood than women ‚ fuelling risk-taking behaviour. As the production of sex hormones wanes with age, so does dangerous driving. By the time they’re in their sixties men are only fractionally more likely than women to perish at the wheel ‚ and, for the pernickety, we are talking small fractions here, not big ones.

After a lengthy digression into evolutionary theory of dubious political correctness (hunting vs. child rearing etc.) Williams ends up concluding that men are “naturally better at car control, but females have better self control. Statistically, this latter attribute is more effective at keeping you alive.”

All of which chimes with figures published by AA Insurance last year confirming that male drivers generally make bigger claims than their female counterparts. Average claims made by young male drivers come in at £4,500 compared with £2,700 for females. Hence the (highly sexist) lower premiums.

Somehow, Bankstone News suspects this debate isn’t quite over yet.

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