Friday, Jul 24, 2026 The claims desk. Receipts included. POWERED BY LENZ ↗
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GENERAL

The Claim

Statistical data shows that women have worse driving records than men.

Verified by Lenz ·

The Short Version

This claim is false. The most authoritative data — from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and peer-reviewed research — consistently shows that men have higher crash rates than women when properly adjusted for driving exposure. Men's fatal crash involvement per 100 million miles is 63% higher than women's. The argument that women have "worse records" relies on poorly defined per-capita metrics from low-authority law-firm blogs, which lack valid denominators and conflict with rigorous, exposure-controlled studies.

Caveats

  • The claim relies on a metric-switch fallacy: using raw per-capita figures instead of exposure-adjusted (per-mile) crash rates, which is the standard method for comparing driving safety between groups.
  • The main sources supporting the claim are law-firm marketing blogs and insurance price comparisons — not direct driving-record statistics — and they conflict with higher-authority peer-reviewed and IIHS data.
  • 'Driving records' is an ambiguous term; across nearly all well-defined metrics (fatal crashes per mile, crash rates across conditions, severity of incidents), men consistently show worse outcomes than women.

The Receipts

  1. Fatality Facts 2023: Males and females

    Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)

  2. Are there sex differences in crash and crash-related injury between...

    PubMed Central / National Center for Biotechnology Information

  3. Do Men or Women Get In More Car Accidents? - Mighty

    Mighty

  4. Do Men or Women Pay More for Car Insurance in 2026? - FinanceBuzz

    FinanceBuzz

  5. Who Causes More Car Accidents Men or Women? UPDATED 2025 - Malman Law

    Malman Law

  6. Male vs. Female Drivers | Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp

    Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp

  7. On the Road Safety: Gender Differences in Risk-Taking Driving Behaviors Among Seniors Aged 65 and Older - PMC

    PMC

  8. Women Are Safer Drivers Than Men - Personal Injury Law Firm

    Personal Injury Law Firm

  9. Driving Safer: A Look at How Men and Women Use Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

    Driving Safer: A Look at How Men and Women Use Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

  10. Men vs Women: who are safer drivers? - UbiCar Insurance

    UbiCar Insurance

+ 7 more sources — see the full list on Lenz

Filed Under

menwomen

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