Get the men out of the roads and we will have fewer and less fatal accidents. Since time immemorial, men took risks with their lives and lived much less carefully compared to women.
It is in-born in men to seek to appear to be macho. The expression of this tendency on the roads is in the higher instances of drunk driving, generally riskier driving habits, and fast driving. The role of men in car accidents supersedes that of women. Men are responsible for causing a larger number of fatal car accidents compared to women.
Drunk driving is one of the most common causes of road accidents. As a laxative, alcohol interferes with coordination of the body. This makes it relatively more difficult to control a vehicle on the road. Drunk drivers cannot respond quickly enough to emergencies because of the reduced coordination of the senses.
In some cases, a driver may actually fall asleep behind the wheel under the influence of alcohol. Statistically speaking, men are more likely to drink and drive compared to women. Shefer notes that, “men constitute the majority of drug abusers and are greater consumers of alcohol than women” (25).
In situations where women drink and drive, they take lesser alcohol compared to men. These makes men responsible for more of the drink and drive related accidents, and generally increases the instances of accidents caused by men.
From a risk perspective, men have a higher tendency to take risks compared to women. Arguably, risk is part of the male psyche. They tend participate to risky activities more than women.
Some psychologists suggest that the risk impulse in men results from higher levels of the hormone testosterone. This partly explains why more men than women participate in high adrenaline sports such as bungee jumping, deep-sea diving and sky diving. Nature conspired to provide men with a higher risk affinity compared to women thereby predisposing them to risky living habits.
On the roads, this risk affinity shows when men attempt risky maneuvers which at times end fatally. Men will overtake around blind corners, they will drive closer to other vehicles, and they will try to beat the train at the railway crossing, all this for the kick of it! Bartley reports that in Brazil, road accidents kill 30,000 people annually, with men accounting for 82 percent of the fatalities (226). This clearly demonstrates the results of some of the risky male habits on the roads.
Over speeding is a well-known cause of road accidents. Men tend to drive faster than women do. This explains why there are more male drivers in racing sports compared to women.
It is easier to find a group of young men racing their cars in the free way or in the suburban compared to finding young women of the same age doing the same. In mixed-sex races, men tend to dominate the motor sports. The expression of the male desire to speed on the roads shows when more men drive faster than recommended speed limits, increasing the likelihood of high speed accidents.
When discussing car accidents, Dorn states among other thing that the safety of a car depends on “their effective use” (136). It presupposes recommended driving speeds under given the environmental conditions, which men ignore, ending up in fatalities. The way to safer roads, it seems, is to reduce the number of men in our roads.
Works Cited
Bartley, Graham. Traffic accidents: causes and outcomes. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2008. Print.
Dorn, Lisa. Driver behavior and training. New York: Ashgate Publishing, 2003. Print.
Shefer, Tamara, et al. From boys to men: social constructions of masculinity in contemporary society. Capetown: Juta and Company, 2007. Print.