GREENSBORO, N.C. — Let's 'drive' home the truth about a rumor on the roadway.
The Insurance research company AutoInsurance.org finds auto insurance policies are 10 percent higher for young men than women.
On the heels of National Teen Driver Safety week, we're navigating the facts to VERIFY.
THE QUESTION
Is it true teenage boys are more likely than girls to be involved in auto wrecks?
THE SOURCES
- Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
- Stephanie Wolfe, MD - Cone Health, pediatric neurologist
THE ANSWER
Yes, boys are more likely than girls to get hurt or killed in auto wrecks, in part because their brains make them more prone to riskier decision-making. This fact is why auto insurance policies often cost more for teenage boys than for girls.
THE PROCESS
Most of the available data on teenage crashes focuses on traffic deaths.
The IIHS compiled data dating to 1975 and found traffic deaths involving boys far surpassed girls each year. The gap narrowed in the last decade, but in 2020, there were still 1,000 more boys than girls who died in car wrecks. The ratio that year was 68 percent boys to 32 percent girls.
NHTSA notes the causes of teen-related crashes are inexperience, immaturity, substance impairment and distracted driving.
Pediatric neurologist Stephanie Wolfe, MD, partly blames those risk factors on sheer biology.
"Most of the structures of the brain are fully formed by the teenage years, but the piece that really isn't formed until even the mid-20s is the frontal lobe. The important part of the frontal lobe is it's responsible for executive decision-making, attention and reasoning," she explained.
To compensate, she said teenagers use the brain's fight-or-flight mechanism called the amygdala to make decisions, which are often impulsive ones. Boys typically rely on the amygdala longer than girls do.
"Because boys are several years behind girls (in pre-frontal cortex development), they end up making more of those rash decisions. Boys are more likely than girls to be in motor vehicle accidents because of these decisions," she noted.
NHTSA reports in the last decade, deadly wrecks involving young male drivers increased by nine percent, compared to a seven-percent decrease for young female drivers.
That said, the CDC reports the percentage of all teenage drivers who drink and drive in high school has decreased by more than half since 1991.
