December 1954 page 11

[image: line drawing of race car]
The Best Driver
MALE OR FEMALE?

"STATISTICS," said the party of the
first part, "are the proof."

"Oh, yeah?" sneered the party of the
second part. "You can make statistics
prove anything, if you want."

True, figures and decimals won't sat-
isfactorily conclude an argument. Never-
theless, the mounting statistics available
all indicate simply this:

Women are the safest drivers.

Take it or leave it, as you choose.

Analyze the accident reports at any
state highway department and you'll
find more men than women are in-
volved in accidents just about every
time, even considering the ratio of men
to women drivers.

Anyone, of course, could shoot enough
holes through such statistics to make
them look like a wire fence. The argu-
ment would be that the whole thing's
got to be figured on a mileage basis.

To dramatize safety on the road, two
researchers not long ago drove all the
way from San Francisco to New York,
recording every safety violation they ob-
served and marking down the sex of the
driver in each one.

How the survey worked

Their notations were based on the
twenty most common traffic offenses
contained in a check-list used in certain
high schools where driver training is
taught and compiled by experts for the
Hudson Motor Car Company which re-
cently merged with Nash to become
American Motor Car Company.

The meticulous checking was made on
the West-East transcontinental trip
after the researchers had first driven
non-stop from New York to San Fran-
cisco in three days and eight hours -- tak-
ing turns at the wheel, and obeying speed
and traffic laws to the letter.

Of 2,061 safety violations noted on the
trip, men accounted for 1,821 and
women 240. Even considering the nation-
al ratio of seven men drivers for every
three women, the figures would indicate
that the male driver is by far the worse
highway menace.

Women, of course

The transcontinental drivers -- Claire
Emory, former Connecticut newspaper-
woman, and Dorothy Mignault, attorney
and management consultant (oh, you
guessed they must have been women,
huh?)-- reported speeding made up half
the total violations.

To guard against possible accusations
of prejudice in favor of their sex, the
women researchers were accompanied on
various stretches of their survey by state
highway or safety commission officials
who made the scoring with them.

The still-doubting Thomases can scru-
tinize a study made recently by N. C.
State College. The mileage angle was
taken into consideration, and it was
foud that on the basis of miles driven
in North Carolina, male drivers have 1.3
times as many accidents as the women.

The men who make up 63 per cent of
the state's drivers, were involved in 91.5
per cent of the accidents studied. Speeds
of more than 50 miles an hour were in-
volved in 89.6 per cent of the fatal acci-
dents that came under the survey.

"Well now," said the party of the

12 SEMAPHORE