Driving license inspectors will now receive training to “attenuate” certain gender stereotypes in the evaluation of young drivers, said Florence Guillaume, interministerial delegate for Road Safety, on Thursday. The costs of driving training to obtain a B license are on average 15% higher for women than for men and the test pass rate is “a little less than 53%” for women, compared to 61%. % for men, emphasizes Florence Guillaume.
“On the other hand, we have an extremely differentiated accident rate, since 80% of mortality (on the road, ed.) is male,” he adds.
This reality is particularly marked among young drivers (18 to 24 years old), who represent “90% of road deaths.” On the other hand, “84% of those allegedly responsible for fatal accidents” and “93% of those allegedly responsible for alcohol-related fatal accidents” are men, says Florence Guillaume.
Women are offered more driving hours
The application of this “awareness-raising” module, developed in particular with a team of sociologists, should allow new promotions of inspectors to “mitigate” certain biases “by questioning their own stereotypes.” The “test” operations carried out by researchers from the Gustave-Eiffel University of Champs-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne) with the driving schools showed that, depending on “your name is Léa or Léo”, the driving schools “offered more hours of driving for women,” details the delegate. Likewise, “the driving instructor will more easily guide a young woman towards the driving simulator, anticipating the fact that she might feel less comfortable on the road.”
This system also aims to “promote women better (…) since there is a general cautious and much more assertive behavior” among them, without being “valued” in learning to drive because most of the time it is perceived “like a lack of trust,” he points out. A total of 3,170 people died on the roads of mainland France in 2023, a slight decrease of 3% compared to the previous year, Road Safety announced based on provisional statistics from the beginning of February.
Source: BFM TV
