Women and the driving test

There are two statistics that form the basis of this short article. I invite the reader to consider what they mean for the validity of practical driver testing in Great Britain (and possibly elsewhere), especially as it relates to gender equality and outcomes.

First, a glance at table DRT0201 in the official practical car test statistics for Great Britain shows, as of the 15th February 2023, that the annual pass rate for female candidates has been lower than that of male candidates since April 2007. This is as far back as the data go. Until the full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic began in April 2020 (massively reducing the number of tests taken meaning small samples skew the figures) the closest the female pass rate had ever come to the male one in a given month was a deficit of 5.7 percentage points, with an average monthly deficit of 6.7 points. Interestingly, since the pandemic the gap has somewhat closed, but there is still an average deficit of 4.2 percentage points since April 2021. Even including the 'small sample' periods when lockdowns were in force, there has not been a single month in the last 15 years that the female pass rate has equalled or exceed that of males. I don't have access to data before 2007, but I am wondering if this has EVER happened.

Second, the official statistics for injury collisions in Great Britain for the 10 years from 2012 show that for fatal and serious injury collisions, in every year about twice as many males are involved in such collisions than females, and this is true for every age group. Of course there are nuances to consider here. For example there are differences in exposure, and this effect is not confined to driving - it is true in pedestrian collisions and injury overall from a young age. Men are still, however, over-represented in injury collisions.

The take home here for me is this.:

1. The driving test discriminates against women in one way - by blocking their access to independent mobility despite their better safety record
2. It discriminates against men in another - by failing to protect them from exposure to risk despite their worse safety record.

It might also be wider than the driving test. It might be for example that the whole system of learning to drive is biased against women passing the test, perhaps because there are many more male Approved Driving Instructors (ADIs). In the year to March 2022 for example there were 1,675 male passes of the ADI 3 test versus 662 female ones. Might it be that male ADIs are simply better at teaching male candidates? A similar question could be asked of examiners - who again are more likely to be male.

There might also be causality running in the other direction here. Perhaps women are safer because they take longer to pass the test than men, and this extra time in the learning stage benefits them through maturation and experience, the two things we have known for decades help improve safety for novice drivers.

As usual, data on the specific gender issues here is lacking. Others have written about this topic but in the wise words of W. Edwards Deming "Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion".