In 2005, the fatal crash involvement rate per 100,000 population was almost 3 times higher for male drivers than for females.

Males accounted for 70 percent of all traffic fatalities, 70 percent of all pedestrian fatalities, and 87 percent of all pedalcyclist fatalities in 2005.

Among male drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2005, 23 percent had BAC levels of .08 g/dL or higher, compared with 13 percent of the female drivers involved in fatal crashes.

Among female drivers of passenger vehicles involved in fatal crashes in 2005, 25 percent were unrestrained at the time of the collision, compared with 38 percent of male drivers in fatal crashes.

This makes it likely that women have more trivial traffic infractions or at least ones less likely to get them killed. If there is a bias against men, it likely arises from this difference in actual behavior.

That bias could make attributions of fault or rates of ticketing/warning somewhat suspect as a reliable measure. That is, any officer on traffic enforcement knows that young men are the most likely to be doing stupid things that cause crashes. Therefore, in the event of a crash, you assume the young man was at fault. Men should receive most traffic tickets, but it will be hard to say exactly what proportion of traffic infractions men commit.

I’m not really sure I agree with that. Seems a little too zero-sum.

Certainly the damage done to others when an attractive female is let go with a warning is very indirect and individually very small. Making it damage that’s very hard to emotionally relate to. Whereas the possibility of being sexually harassed should be quite easy to relate to for a lot of women.

I’m not saying it’s rational reason, it’s just an explanation as to why people do not care much about discrimination that benefits a easily identifiable group rather than harming them. I’d be very surprised if even an atempt at rational thinking played much of a role in determining what engages people in these kind of issues.

Mostly I imagine discrimation is only something that becomes an issue when the damage is something a bunch of people can imagine happen to them and being pretty bad. If there’s only a small net negative for every individual and only indirectly I doubt many people are going to care at all.

Mark, I agree that it is logically possible that female pullover indications tend to be more of trivial infractions; I just don’t find that a plausible explanation in fact.

I think it’s *safer* rather than *better*.

On average women tend to drive a fair bit less than men as well as being generally less confident and less risk taking than men. So men tend to have more driving experience but also be involved in worse accidents due to overconfidence in their driving abilities.

It also appears that women are 1/3 as likely to drive drunk and also less likely to repeat if convicted. Suggesting a somewhat different risk profile after an infraction.

But the probablistic mix of offenses committed by a typical man-who-is-pulled-over may well be quite different than that for women. Assume for simplicity that cars are pulled over for either reckless driving or trivial infractions. Assume further that men commit “reckless driving” at three times the rate of women. If nearly all reckless driving cases are cited, while nearly all trivial infraction cases are let go with a warning, we’ll see a highly significant difference in citation rate between the genders.

1) Chivalry. It is thought a greater crime to hurt a woman than a man.

2) Politics. There is a well organised lobby group in favour of women (feminism). They will object to anything that is thought to harm women, but will be quieter about, or actively support, anything that appears to benefit women at the expense of men. (I am sure that this group genuinely believes it is in favour of equal treatment, but this is a site about overcoming biases.)

It is therefore politically safer to argue in favour of the woman.