Men 'wired to be bad drivers'

Men are psychologically programmed to be worse drivers than women, according to a report out today.

Male drivers are more likely to exhibit risk-taking and aggressive behaviour on the road than females as a result of their evolution from being hunter-gathers, a psychologist said.

Dr Peter Marsh, of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, England said men were ‘hard-wired’ towards certain types of behaviour, including less safe driving.

His report, based on a number of academic studies into the behavioural differences between men and women, said all studies had shown that men had a higher rate of crashes than women, particularly among people aged under 25.

Dr Marsh said: “Our 21st century skulls, although full of learned behaviours about what we should do in certain situations, essentially contain stone age brains, and the brains of men and women are different in certain crucial aspects.

“Stone age man did not drive, but men’s brains are still governed by the hunter-gatherer instinct.”

He said this meant that when men got behind the wheel they were psychologically programmed for the thrill of the chase, targeted aggression and a degree of lawlessness.

By contrast, he said women’s stone age brains were programmed for child-rearing, communication and social skills, and these nurturing instincts meant female drivers were far less likely to demonstrate aggressive behaviour.

He said: “Eventually the design of our neural circuits will catch up with the conditions that prevail now. Then perhaps we will see quite a different kind of male motorist. The only problem is that this will probably take a few million years.”

The report was commissioned by First Alternative Woman, an insurer for women, in the light of the EU Gender Equality Directive.

The directive, which has yet to be finalised, aims to prevent people being discriminated against because of their sex, but in its current form would stop insurers from taking the sex of the driver into account when setting premiums.

First Alternative Woman has warned that this could lead to an unfair increase in the insurance premiums paid by women.

The group said the report’s findings were backed up by British government figures which showed that in 2002 male drivers accounted for 97% of dangerous driving offences and 83% of speeding offences which went before a court.

It added that industry figures also showed that women cost less to insure than men, with claims from women aged 17 and 18 amounting to around a third less than ones from men of the same age.

Colin Batabyal, chief executive of First Alternative Woman, said: “We would be extremely disappointed to see this bill passed. Insurance pricing is all about providing the fairest premium for each customer.

“We use claims and other statistics to assess the risk of each driver and it is an unarguable fact that women, particularly younger women, cost less in claims than men.

“This bill would be a gross injustice to all the safe women drivers out there and we will be doing all we can to prevent it becoming law.”