Women caused 9% of road accidents in AD

Female drivers were involved in 170 traffic accidents in Abu Dhabi in the first nine months of 2011, only around nine per cent of the nearly 1,620 road mishaps caused by men, a newspaper said on Sunday, citing police statistics.

The accidents caused by women resulted six deaths compared with four deaths in the first nine months of 2010, Albayan Arabic language daily said.

“There was a 33 per cent decline in the deaths caused by female drivers this year,” said Brigadier Hussein al Harthi, head of Abu Dhabi traffic police.

“The main causes of such accidents were negligence, speed, sudden change of lane, jumping the red lights and tyre blasts.”

Albayan cited a traffic police study showing accidents caused by women would likely increase in the future given the steady rise in the number of female drivers as a result of social and economic changes in the country.

“Accidents involving women are still tiny compared with those caused by male drivers…but they are expected to increase as more women take advantage of the social and economic changes in the UAE to drive cars,” it said.

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