JEDDAH, 30 June 2005 — The answer to the question of whether women should drive is very simple. Yes. The answer to why should they drive is also very simple. Safety. They are safer drivers, have fewer accidents and a much lower death rate than men from accidents they are involved in.
Insurance companies in the UK, Europe and the US offer lower premiums to women drivers; insurance companies are not noted for their charitable disposition toward clients so lower premiums for women reflect just one thing. Insurance companies pay out less in accident claims to women drivers; women are a better risk. This does not mean that they are involved in fewer accidents, but the accidents they are involved in are much less serious.
Women have wider peripheral vision than men, up to 20 percent vertically and horizontally. Whatever the biological reasons, 180 degree vision — and most women have that — is useful when driving. In the US, 30 percent of all car-occupant deaths came from side impact crashes. Statistics for Saudi Arabia are not available — but certainly, women drivers with wider vision could only reduce the number of sideswipes.
In an automobile accident, passengers are two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury in a side-impact crash than in a head-on collision, according to a 2004 study at the University of Rochester in the US.
“Your head is very close to the window or another object the car is striking. The door doesn’t absorb much energy,” said an author of the study, which appeared in the Annals of Emergency Medicine (Aug. 1, 2004).
The study suggests the auto industry install more side airbags to protect the head, pelvis and chest, rather than just the head. Structural vehicle changes — including side airbags — could prevent large numbers of fatal or critical head injuries. According to the report, traumatic brain injury results in death in 51 percent to 74 percent of single-car side collisions, and in 41 percent to 64 percent of multiple car side-impact crashes.
A local argument against women driving runs thus: If women drove, they would cause accidents because men would be staring at them. The answer to that is also depressingly simple. If men cannot keep their eyes on the road when they are inside a couple of tons of moving metal that has the potential to wipe out whole families, then they should not be anywhere near them, let alone in charge of them.
An equally fatuous one is that women are not allowed to drive “for their safety.” It is not women who are unsafe, as ample statistical and biological evidence shows. Perhaps it really means “for their safety from current road users.”
There was a famous opinion from a respected academic in Makkah to the effect that “Women caused 50 percent of road accidents in Saudi Arabia.” Apparently this was because they told their male drivers to stop at streetside stalls. No statistical evidence was used to support this fantasy.
Perhaps the “safety” argument should include children as well. Which would you rather have: A trained woman driver in charge of a vehicle — they can fly aeroplanes and pilot space shuttles, so a pickup truck should not trouble them — or trust your children’s safety to a 12 year-old boy? Perhaps if the boy’s mother was allowed to drive, the dangers for his younger siblings in a car crash would be reduced or even eliminated.
It is a strange set of circumstances that turns a blind eye to a 12-year-old driving a pickup truck in Taif with the potential to wipe out his three brothers and a sister yet prevents a female pilot qualified to fly people round the world in a jet from driving to work.
