Young female drivers, under age 50, have a lower fatality rate than their male counterparts, on a per mile driven basis, while the rate is essentially the same for both male and female drivers over 50 years of age. On a per population basis, drivers under the age of 25 had the highest rate of involvement in fatal crashes of any age group. Nearly one-third of all children between the ages of 5 and 9 years who were killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes were pedestrians. Almost one-fourth of the traffic fatalities under age 16 were pedestrians. In 1995, the fatal crash involvement rate per 100,000 population was 3 times as high for male drivers as for females.
Female drivers continue to exhibit safer driving statistics than male drivers.
The intoxication rate for male drivers involved in fatal crashes was 21.8 percent, compared with 11.2 percent for female drivers. On average, a pedestrian is killed in a motor vehicle crash every 94 minutes, and one is injured every 6 minutes. The intoxication rate for the drivers involved was 14 percent, less than half that for the pedestrians. In 6 percent of the crashes, both the driver and the pedestrian were intoxicated. Pedalcyclists made up 2 percent of all the people injured in traffic crashes and 2 percent of all traffic fatalities during the year.