“Women are much more likely than men to suffer a serious injury when they are involved in a crash,” according to a new report from the insurance industry’s main auto safety watchdog. The difference appears to have several causes, including “the types of vehicles women drive and the circumstances of their crashes, rather than physical differences,” study authors say.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) researchers report that, on a per-crash basis, women are 20-28 percent more likely than men to die and 37-73 percent more likely to suffer serious injury after adjusting for speed and other factors.
IIHS Vice President of Vehicle Research Jessica Jermakian explains, “The numbers indicate that women more often drive smaller, lighter cars and that they’re more likely than men to be driving the struck vehicle in side-impact and front-into-rear crashes. Once you account for that, the difference in the odds of most injuries narrows dramatically.”
When researchers compared crashes of similar-size vehicles across different model years, they found that safety enhancements seem to have benefits male and female drivers about equally. But the results add more fuel to calls for crash test dummies that better reflect how many different types of bodies move in an accident.
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A consortium of auto insurance companies funds the IIHS. It performs rigorous crash testing and other automotive safety research.
