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Bad female drivers? It's just a myth, new analysis finds

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 19, 2007

WASHINGTON - That age-old stereotype about female drivers being unsafe is shattered in a major new traffic analysis: Male drivers have a 77 percent higher risk of dying in a car accident than women, based on miles driven.

And the author of the research says he takes it to heart - when he travels his wife takes the wheel.

"I put a mitt in my mouth and ride shotgun," said David Gerard, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher who was a co-author of the analysis.

The study holds plenty of other surprises.

-The highway death rate is higher for cautious 82-year-old women than for risk-taking 16-year-old boys.

-New England is the safest region for drivers - despite all the talk about crazy Boston drivers.

-The safest passenger is a youngster strapped in a car seat and being driven during morning rush hour.

The findings are from Traffic STATS, a risk analysis of road fatality statistics by Carnegie Mellon for the American Automobile Association.

The analysis calculates that overall, about one death occurs for every 100-million passenger miles traveled. And it shows that some long-held assumptions about safety on U.S. highways don't jibe with hard numbers.

For example, those 82-year-old women are 60 percent more likely to die on the road than a 16-year-old boy because they are so frail, said Anne McCartt of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who was not part of the study.

Right behind octogenarians in high risk are young male drivers, ages 16-23 with fatality rates four times higher than average.

Of all the ages to be in a car, 4-year-olds have the lowest death risks - probably because they are in child car seats and their parents drive more carefully, Fischbeck said.

"They are really protected, they're being driven around in times of day when it's very safe (and often in minivans)," said study co-author Paul Fischbeck. "It's a win-win-win-win situation."

[Last modified January 19, 2007, 01:37:07]