Women Truckers

Six times more likely than men truckers to have fatal accidents

Women drive only 30% of miles driven by autos, but are in 37% of the fatal accidents

Scientific Evidence that Men and Women are Designed Differently

4.2% of Licensed Truckers, 17.7% of Fatal Accidents!

MEN TRUCKERS SAVE 44,190 LIVES PER YEAR

If all 2.5 million truckers were women drivers, truckers alone would have 44,190 highway fatalities each year, doubling the number of motor vehicle fatalities in the US.  If only men were issued commercial drivers licenses, we'd have 1,480 fewer fatalities each year.

"The number of lady truckers is rapidly growing, from less than 2 percent of the total drivers a decade ago to about 4.2 percent today. Of 2.5 million truckers hauling rigs of various sizes, just over 100,000 are women. "There has been steady growth," says Ron Roth of the American Trucking Associations. "I think women are not so overwhelmed by the hardships anymore."

SOBER WOMEN DIE AT A RATE 24 TIMES THAT OF DRINKING WOMEN DRIVERS

Was alcohol a factor in this higher accident rate of women truckers?  Only 663 or 6.4% of the 10,424 truckers involved in fatal accidents in 2002 were reported by the police to be "alcohol involved". Unless women truckers drink considerably more than men truckers, only about 119 of the 1,856 women truckers involved in fatal accidents would have been "alcohol involved", which could not have impacted the average fatal accident rate of women by very much.  Furthermore, only 1,594 or 4.7% of the 33,864 women involved in fatal accidents in 2002 (including drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists) were reported by the police to be "alcohol involved", and only 1,077 were women drivers with a BAC > 0.10, so sober women general were involved in 24 times as many fatal accidents as drinking women drivers.

Even if this is the primary cause for their higher accident rate, a remote possibility, this still is no reason to permit women to have commercial drivers licenses.

HOW DRUNK SHOULD A MAN BE TO GET THIS DANGEROUS?

How drunk does a man trucker or auto driver need to be to have an accident rate this high?  Of the 10,243 men involved in fatal accidents in 2002 which were listed as "alcohol involved", many of whom were drivers of both trucks and passenger cars who may have been charged with the serious crime of drinking and driving, 3,369 or a third of them had a BAC < .012, which means that they were statistically safer drivers than the average woman driver.  Of the 6,874 men who had a BAC high enough to drive as dangerously as the average woman, 2,013 were pedestrians, passengers, or cyclists who were COUNTED as a man who caused a fatal accident, many of whom were killed by sober women drivers.

'GRAND RAPIDS EFFECT" DUPLICATED IN GERMANY

Several road side studies around the world have demonstrated that the safest drivers, the ones involved in the least number of accidents relative to their measured presence on the roads and highways, are drivers with a bac = 0.04, having 30% fewer accidents than expected.  Even though the media and MADD and the NHTSA proclaim from the mountain tops that this driver is the root of all evil (with 287 accidents in 2002 involving people with a bac =0.04, and five times as many men as women who were so incapacitated), the average woman driver is 8.5 times more likely than him to have a fatal accident, 6.2 times more likely than a driver with a bac = 0.02, 5.5 times more likely as one with a bac = 0.06, almost twice as likely as one with a bac = 0.08, and on par with a driver with a bac = 0.12.

SOBER WOMEN ON PAR WITH MEN WITH A BAC OF 0.16

Unfortunately, all of these road side studies are flawed because they didn't break down the results by sex.  Considering the already high accident rates of women, and the significant difference between the way men and women metabolize alcohol, it's unlikely that women drivers achieved a similar improvement in driving skills by having one or two drinks.  Assuming the worst case scenario, that driving skills of women don't get even worse at bac levels between 0.01 and 0.12, and that women represented only 10% of the drivers in the studies (even though the figure could be 20% or higher), then the benefit to men drivers of having a bac between 0.01 and 0.12 are significantly greater.

At a bac level of 0.02, men drivers, rather than being 4% less likely to have an accident, would be 35% less likely if only 10% of the drivers in the study were women, and 51% less likely if 20% were.  If 20% of the drivers in the study were women, then rather than women drivers having an accident rate equivalent to men drivers with a BAC = 0.12, they would have an accident rate equivalent to men drivers with a BAC between 0.14 and 0.16.

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/queryReport.cfm?Year=2002&stateid=0&page=field

1,856 or 17.8% of those who were known to have held a commercial drivers license who had a fatal accident in 2002 were women.

Copyright @ 2007 by Fathers' Manifesto & Christian Party