Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

took place in the evening and at night. The speed was often much too high
(in 83% of the cases) and in about half of the cases the young male driver was
under the influence of alcohol. The loss-of-control crashes involving young
female drivers most of the times occurred in daylight. In 40% of the cases, the
young female driver drove too fast and in 6% of the cases, the young female
driver was under the influence of alcohol. Young female drivers had
significantly more loss-of-control crashes on slippery roads than young male
drivers. The results suggest that for young male drivers, loss-of-control is
more often the result of risk taking behaviour (speeding, driving while under
the influence of alcohol) and for young female drivers more often the result
of poor vehicle handling.
Structural brain differences
Could the differences in crash rates and types of crashes between young
female drivers and young male drivers be caused by differential
developments of their brains? Differences in behaviour between young
females and young males may be caused by cultural differences (the way
boys and girls are educated and socialized), by biological differences and of
course by a combination of the two. In this section, the biological differences
will be discussed and in the section about lifestyle (Section 2.4.1) the cultural
differences will be discussed.
There are some quantitative differences between the average adult brain of
females and the average adult brain of males, but there is also considerable
variance within each sex and consequently there is a substantial overlap
between brains of men and women. Overall, the total cerebral volume is on
average about 10% less in adult females than in adult males. Adult females
have less gray matter and less white matter than adult males, even after
accounting for sex differences in overall body height and weight. When
however expressed as a percentage of total brain volume, sex differences in
the volume of white matter disappear. Whether this is also the case for gray
matter is inconclusive (Paus, 2009). Only a few regions are on average larger
in the male brain than in the female brain, including the amygdala and the
hippocampus. There are however also a few regions that are on average lager
in the adult female brain than in the adult male brain, including the OFC, the
anterior cingulate gyrus, the posterior cingulate gyrus (has a memory related
function and gets activated by emotional stimuli), the inferior frontal gyrus
(plays a role in inhibition and risk aversion) and the corpus callosum (the
connection between the right and left cerebral hemispheres) (Paus, 2009).
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