According to the latest statistical data from the Directorate General of Traffic (DGT) Yearbook, referring to 2021, there are almost 11.7 million women with a driving license in Spain. A figure that has grown strongly in recent years, since in 2007 the number of female drivers in our country was slightly higher than 9.7 million.
The difference with respect to men is still considerable, although it tends to decrease more each year. There are just over 15.5 million men with a driver’s license, a figure that has remained stagnant in the last 15 years. In 2007, male drivers already exceeded 15 million, while in 2013 the record for driving licenses was achieved among them, reaching 15.6 million, according to the DGT.
Despite the fact that there is currently a difference of almost four million, the female progress is undoubted. 30 years ago, the driver census registered 70.5% men and 29.5% women. Three decades later, the female proportion in the census of Spanish drivers is 43%.
If the accident rate data is analyzed, it can be seen that only 20% of fatalities in traffic accidents are women. The rest, eight out of ten deaths, are men. The explanations for this phenomenon are diverse. One of them is that men spend more hours behind the wheel, as can be seen from various studies. The behavior is also different. According to the INSIA of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, men break speed and alcohol limits, while women are more easily distracted.
Likewise, a report by the Murgibe consultancy for the DGT states that women use seat belts more than men. More than 90% of the female victims -both fatalities and hospitalized- used it, a percentage that in men slightly exceeded 80%.
However, the greater caution of women when driving does not guarantee milder consequences after a traffic accident. The reason is cars, which have been designed “by and for men”, says the report Autonomous vehicles through gender perspective glasses, prepared by the Valencia Institute of Biomechanics (IBV).
In fact, the results of the study indicate that when a woman suffers a car accident, she is 47% more likely to suffer serious injuries than a man, and 71% more likely to suffer moderate injuries. In addition, women are 17% more likely to die if the vehicle is involved in a serious accident.
According to the researchers, these differences are due to the fact that the differentiated needs of women in terms of safety have not been taken into account. For this reason, more “gender perspective” is called for in the manufacture of future models, since the engineering teams that design current cars are made up mostly of men.
The study ensures that the design of the technical and anthropomorphic parameters is based on male bodies, without taking into account aspects such as weight, height and sex. This greatly compromises the safety of all people who do not meet the standards, especially women, but also boys and girls or people with functional diversity.
The clearest example is that of the female dummies, the dolls used in the safety tests that vehicles must undergo before reaching the market. Until a few years ago, manufacturers only used male mannequins to perform such tests.
However, in recent times women’s dummies have been created that are slowly adding to the tests. Initially, the female mannequins were only used in the passenger seat and not in the driver’s seat. Likewise, the dolls were not faithful to the reality of a female body, since only the weight and height of the male ones were reduced.
In this way, the differences between the male and female body have not been taken into account when designing the dummies, which compromises the safety of women after a traffic accident. According to a study by Volvo, a pioneering brand in equality in this area, women tend to suffer more injuries than men in three parts of the body.
First, the thorax, as a woman’s ribcage is usually weaker, not as high up, and has a slightly wider base than a man’s. Also in the cervical, since the female neck tends to be longer and more vulnerable to a whiplash. Lastly, women suffer more head damage than men, largely because the airbags do not conform 100% to their shape, the report says.
