WASHINGTON (AFP) - Women are more likely to sustain injuries in an auto accident because safety features are designed more with men in mind, a study said Thursday.
Combing through a decade of data about US motor vehicle accidents, three researchers found the odds of serious injury for female drivers wearing seat belts were 47 percent higher than those of men in a comparable mishap.
Previous studies have focused on differences in the way men and women drive, but the researchers -- writing in the American Journal of Public Health -- said another explanation could be the design of safety features.
The positioning of head restraints, for instance, fails to take into account how women's necks are different in size and strength.
Women also face a higher risk of injuries to the lower extremities because of their shorter stature, added Dipan Bose and Jeff Crandall of the University of Virginia and Maria Segui-Gomez of Navarra University in Spain.
To address such sex-specific disparity, "health policies and vehicle regulations must focus on effective safety designs specifically tailor toward the female population for equity in injury reduction," the researchers said.
In another article in the same journal, researchers said that while teenagers drive better the older they get, their likelihood for risky driving
-- like fast starts, hard stops and sharp turns -- remains unchanged.
A US-Canadian team led by Bruce Simons-Morton at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development outside Washington affixed G-force monitors into the cars of volunteer families in two mid-sized Virginia cities.
Crash and near-crash rates fell among newly-licensed teenagers during three-month research periods, but their level of risky driving behavior remained five times higher throughout.
"It's not clear if this is due to intent, that (risky driving) is fun or if teenagers are simply clueless about the risk of such driving," Simons-Morton said in a conference call with reporters.
One possibility, he said, is that experience gives teenagers a false sense that they could assume more risk. In the United States, driver's licenses can be obtained as early as the age of 16.
<한글기사>
자동차 사고시 여성이 부상 위험 더 크다
자동차 안전장치는 남성을 더 염두에 두고 설계돼 있기 때문에 사고가 발생하면 여성이 다칠 가능성이 더 크다는 연구 결과가 나왔다.
미국 버지니아 대학과 스페인 나바라 대학의 합동연구팀은 미 공중보건저널 최 신호에 발표한 논문에서 남녀의 운전 습관 차이 때문에 상해도에도 차이가 있다는 종래의 학설과는 달리 자동차 안전설계가 남성 위주로 돼 있다는 점을 새롭게 지적 했다.
연구팀은 구체적으로 미국에서 10년 동안 발생한 자동차 사고를 분석한 결과, 안전벨트를 하고 있을 때 여성 운전자가 중상을 입을 가능성이 남성에 비교해 47%나 높았다고 지적했다.
머리 지지대의 경우도 여성의 목이 크기와 힘에서 남성의 그것과 다르다는 것을 고려하지 않고 설계됐다는 것이 연구자들의 지적이다.
