esure.com

• car
• home
• pet
• travel
• loans
• motorbike
• van

Cavemen in cars

esure car insurance commissioned eminent psychologist, Professor Geoffrey Beattie, who is the Head of the school of psychological sciences at Manchester University to carry out an academic review of the differences between male and female drivers.

The resulting report is entitled ‘Sex Differences in Driving and Insurance Risk: understanding the neurobiological and evolutionary foundations of the differences’. It was released by esure in April 2008.

The report looks at a wide range of published evidence that investigates how and why men behave differently to women when driving cars.

Here is the executive summary of the report. A PDF of the whole report is available for download

Executive Summary of "Sex differences in driving and insurance risk: understanding the neurobiological and evolutionary foundations of the differences" by Professor Geoffrey Beattie for esure car insurance

Men and women exhibit different driving behaviours that affect their safety and insurance risk. Many factors underpin these differences, including neurobiological structures and hormonal processes shaped by evolution, and global socialisation practices. Each plays a part in explaining why men and women drivers have very different records in relation to accidents and insurance claims.

• Differences between male and female drivers in terms of crash rates are evident in a wide range of countries, including the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa, with males being significantly more at risk than females.
• Similar differences are evident regarding male and female pedestrians and accidents in the home and workplace.
• The differences are not easily explained in terms of levels of competence and driving skill of men and women. They derive from more fundamental differences in specific areas of behaviour and psychological functioning.
• There is extensive evidence to show that men, and young men in particular, tend to be more aggressive than women (in all known cultures) and they express aggression in a direct, rather than indirect, manner. This has a very significant impact on driving - encouraging more competitive and hostile behaviour with consequent higher probabilities of having an accident.
• Indirect female forms of aggression depend critically upon empathetic skills; male forms of aggression do not. Women tend to be much more empathetic than men and this will have a direct impact on driving behaviour because women will be better able to take the other’s perspective, for example, when the other person makes a violation or error the empathetic individual will respond less harshly as a consequence.
• Levels of deviant (rule-breaking) behaviour are significantly higher in men than in women. This manifests itself in a greater frequency of violation of traffic regulations, including speed limits, traffic controls, drink-driving, etc.
• Men also exhibit, on average, higher levels of sensation-seeking and risk-taking in a wide variety of settings. The basis for this well-established sex difference has a hormonal and neurochemical basis - it is not simply a product of socialisation or experience.
• The differences between the sexes in terms of their risk-proneness while driving can be explained, at least in part, using an evolutionary psychology perspective. This proposes that much of neural circuitry of the human brain evolved to meet the requirements of societies and cultures very different from our own - that of the hunter gatherer - that existed for over 99% of our evolution as a species. Our 21st century skulls contain essentially ‘stone-age’ brains, and the brains of men and women are different in certain crucial respects.
• Recent evidence also shows that the brain goes through a remodelling process during adolescence as the prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex change in line with other physical developments during puberty. Cognitive abilities that rely on the functioning of these brain regions also change during adolescence. Executive functions such as selective attention and decision making are controlled by these brain areas and many studies have shown that processing speed, memory, inhibitory control and risk taking are not at an optimum during adolescence and that these processes continue to develop into adulthood. This may explain why young drivers are particularly prone to accidents.
• This remodelling also affects the ability of adolescents to interpret emotional expressions; they are significantly slower and less accurate compared with younger children and adults. Emotional recognition is a crucial component in being able to empathise with others - if you cannot recognise what others feel, you cannot hope to understand them. Research has also shown that higher levels of affective empathy are associated with lower levels of aggressive behaviour in adolescents and this may explain why adolescents drive more aggressively and are thus prone to more accidents than older drivers.
• Cars also represent defensible personal space and there are striking sex differences in how men and women use personal space and react to violations of it. Males habitually require more space than females in their everyday life and carry around with them a larger interpersonal bubble. They are also more sensitive to violations in interpersonal space than women and react more immediately and directly to such violations. This might well explain why they are so sensitive to any space violations by others when driving, like tail gating or being recklessly overtaken and why they respond so immediately and so aggressively. The differential use of space by men and women is probably also biologically hardwired in the brain because although there are striking cultural differences in the use of space, the differences between the sexes seem to be maintained across a wide variety of cultures.
• Stone-age man did not drive. But the legacy of his hunting, aggressive and risk-taking past - qualities that enabled him to survive and mate, thereby passing on his genes to future generations - are still evident in the way in which he typically drives his car.
• A report published by the Department of Gender and Women’s Health at the World Health Organisation has called for recognition of these fundamental differences between men and women drivers and the development of gender-differentiated policies in relevant areas.
• In the light of these new understandings of the neurobiological underpinnings of driving behaviour, we need more theoretically focussed approaches to tackle risky or aggressive driving. Existing interventions focus on a range of attitudinal and cognitive aspects of driving, but if they are to be really successful they will need to recognize the neurobiological substrates, including the role of road rage, as a specific emotional and motivational response, empathy as a basic sex-biased characteristic, and interventions must also display awareness of how the adolescent brain is being remodelled to tailor interventions more effectively.