A few weeks ago, I got into a fender bender on I-20.
It was the second time in less than a year that another driver struck my car from behind. I pulled over only to watch the driver of the other car speed off into the night.
“You’ve had some bad luck,” said my insurance agent as he helped to re-evaluate my coverage.
I agreed. But it turns out that it may not be a matter of luck. The statistics are pretty scary when it comes to traffic accidents involving women.
Women are much more likely than men to suffer a serious car crash injury due to the types of vehicles women drive and the circumstances of their accidents, according to a recent study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
Men are involved in more fatal crashes, but on a per crash basis women are 20-28% more likely than men to be killed and 37-73% more likely to be seriously injured. These statistics hold even after adjusting for speed and other factors.
Thankfully, I wasn’t injured and I did feel lucky to escape those alarming crash statistics, but I worry that the increase in traffic accidents might also mean more women are at risk of serious injury.
Nearly 32,000 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes nationwide in the first nine months of 2021, representing an increase of about 12% compared to fatalities during the same time period in 2020, according to recently released data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Georgia is in line with that trend with a reported 12.2% increase (1,330 fatalities) from January through September 2021.
Roadway fatalities had been declining for 30 years before they took a sharp upward in 2020. The trend seems to be continuing. Empty roadways during the pandemic left many feeling as if they could pick up speed; some drivers haven’t slowed down.
NHTSA has pointed to reckless driving as the cause based on behavioral research that showed speeding and traveling without a seatbelt have been higher since the pandemic began.
This doesn’t bode well for anyone, but women may be at particular risk.
Women tend to drive smaller, lighter cars and are more likely than men to be driving the struck vehicle in side-impact and front to rear crashes, said Jessica Jermakian, vice president of vehicle research for IIHS. Those are the types of impacts that tend to have more fatal outcomes for women.
It almost makes me want to run out to buy a giant SUV, but as Gridlock Guy Doug Turnbull recently reported in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, bigger cars are playing a big factor in pedestrian deaths (which are also on the rise) — so maybe that isn’t such a great idea.
Advocacy groups have lobbied for regulations that would require car manufacturers to use crash test dummies that more closely resemble women’s bodies. Since the mid-1970s, when such dummies were first standardized, they were based on men’s bodies, and not just any man, noted Jermakian, but men in the military who arguably would not have the same body form as even the average man.
In 1980 and again in the mid-90s, several entities requested female crash dummies. NHSTA didn’t put one in a car until 2003, and the one used was just a smaller version of the male mannequin.
Jermakian said when IIHS developed its crash test program in the mid-90s, they understood they were testing one car and one dummy and that it needed to do the best job of measuring the injury risk for all people. We may think of dummies as sophisticated tools, but they are not sophisticated enough to reflect the differences in male and female biology, she said.
“We recognized the dummy wasn’t going to give us all the answers,” Jermakian said. “We don’t just look at what the dummies are telling us, we also look to make sure the structure of the vehicle holds up.”
Despite the limitations of dummies, Jermakian said the agency’s tests have done a good job in driving vehicle changes and innovations — seatbelts, air bags, accident avoidance technology — that have helped protect both men and women.
But it is more important than ever to understand the reasons why women are disproportionately impacted in certain accidents. The IIHS survey found that while men and women are at equal risk of injury to the head and torso, women are still 70% more likely than men to suffer serious lower body trauma.
“We need to do a better job understanding those differences so we know how to address them in our crash test program,” Jermakian said.
Until then, women have to find better ways to protect themselves on the road.
“Buy as much safety as you can afford,” Jermakian said. Among her recommendations: Invest in crash avoidance technologies. Avoid the smallest, lightest cars.
And when you are in the driver’s seat, do the most socially responsible thing: slow down.
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and Twitter (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
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