Beware of His Car: Why Are Men More Dangerous than Women Behind the Wheel?
https://doi.org/10.22394/2074-0492-2024-2-142-163
Abstract
According to statistics, men in Russia and most countries of the world are significantly more likely to cause road accidents than women. Understanding the reasons for these differences may be important for developing measures to reduce the number of road accidents. In the literature on Russia, the issue of the causes of this gender gap remains understudied. We analyse the magnitude of the gap in the odds of committing a serious crash by drivers of different genders and discuss possible reasons for these differences. For this, we use a dataset of 158,000 published court decisions under Article 264 of the Russian Criminal Code for the period from 2010 to 2022. We show that 91.7% of all cases involve male drivers. But even after accounting for differences in the number of drivers of different genders and the number of kilometers they drive on average, men are 3.25 times more likely to commit crashes resulting in criminal prosecutions. One reason for these differences is driving safety. Men are also more likely to commit aggravated road accidents. In almost a quarter of cases, male drivers were driving drunk, while for women the figure is only 10 percent. Judges in turn are more likely to give men a serious sentence if itis a non-fatal offence; in more serious cases, the gender of the driver is less important. We also found a very strong variation in the odds of causing a serious road accident for men and women between Russian regions, suggesting the influence of cultural and socio-economic differences.
Supporting agencies: The research was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 23-78- 10073 “Development and testing of a methodology for automated analysis of texts of sentences of Russian courts for social and legal research (using the example of violent crimes)”, https://rscf.ru/project/23- 78-10073/.
About the Authors
M. D. Belov
National Research University Higher School of Economics;
The University of California
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Mikael D. Belov — Research Intern at International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development
Moscow;
research intern; graduate student
Los Angeles
A. P. Kazun
National Research University Higher School of Economics
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Anton P. Kazun — PhD in Sociology, Director of the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies, Associate Professor, Faculty of Economic Sciences
Moscow
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Review
For citations:
Belov M.D., Kazun A.P. Beware of His Car: Why Are Men More Dangerous than Women Behind the Wheel? Sociology of Power. 2024;36(2):142-163. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22394/2074-0492-2024-2-142-163
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