Study says women drivers at higher risk in car crashes

BMW and Girl

A study just put out by the American Journal of Public Health finds that women have a significantly higher risk of dying or become injured in automotive accidents. The actual figure puts women who wear seat belts at a 47 percent greater risk over men who wear seat belts.

The cause? Design. Since men are much more likely to be in serious or fatal crashes than the ladies, the seat belt systems are geared towards men. This is becoming (?) an increasingly large issue, now that numbers for women in these kinds of accidents are on the rise.

Center for Auto Safety representative Clarence Ditlow doesn’t subscribe to the data, however, and says that because all the crashes research had been done on applied to cars that were, on average, six years old, while “The average life of the car is around 12 years.” He continues, to say “The study would have a lot more value if it were limited to 2000 and later model year vehicles to make sure all vehicles had female friendly airbags… Some of the cars used in the study are almost 20 years old. There wasn’t even a dynamic side impact test standard in effect in 1992.”

Ditlow also notes that efforts have been made by both the automotive industry and the government to resolve the matter in the past, and he notes that there is a difference, still, in the risk for female and male drivers.

– By: Alexandra Koken

Source: ABC News