The tech proves it: South African women are better drivers than men

August 10, 2022 Siyabonga Mtangana

It’s official: South African women are better drivers than their male counterparts. That’s according to telematics data from vehicle tracking and recovery company Netstar.

The newly released data calculated registered incidences of vehicle impacts, harsh braking, harsh acceleration and harsh cornering as a percentage of total male and female Netstar customers over a period of four months.

On every metric, Netstar found, women performed better than men.

The company, which is owned by JSE-listed technology group Altron, said that registered vehicle impacts, such as hitting a pothole, a kerb or another vehicle, by women customers represented 1.3% of the total number of Netstar’s female customer base during the period measured, compared to 1.4% for men.

Those numbers might be close, but the still give the edge to female drivers.

In terms of harsh braking, registered incidents represented 16.9% of female members and a much higher 22.8% of male members.

The numbers for harsh acceleration were 4.5% for women and 10% for men. For harsh cornering, the proportions were 13.2% for women against 18.8% for men.

“The findings indicate that our female customers drove better than our male customers during the four months that we measured [driving behaviour],” said Netstar chief technology officer Cliff de Wit in a statement.