Age and Gender Effects on Accident Types for Rural Drivers

Purposes of this study were to classify types of accidents among rural drivers and determine if these accidents differed by age and gender. We surveyed, for 12 months, police reports from a daily newspaper serving a rural midwestern area. Accidents were categorized by types: laterally moving vehicle, following, gap acceptance, laterally moving object, intruding approach, passing, tracking, skidding, attention deficit. Individuals determined "atfault " were grouped by age: teenage, 16-19; adult, 20-39; middle age, 40-59; young old age, 60-74; old old age, 75+. Results indicated men have significantly more following and skidding accidents. Women had significantly more intruding-approach accidents. We found the following relationships between accident types and age: (1) generally an increasing linear trend between age and laterally moving vehicle and attention-deficit accidents; (2) the incidence of intruding-approach accidents was high in all age groups; (3) following and skidding accidents generally demonstrated a decreasing linear trend with age.