Women much more likely to ask for wheel change, but men more likely to have accidents
AA Ireland has released a detailed analysis of the almost 160,000 rescue call outs that the motoring organisation attended to during 2007. The data shows that women are much more likely to ask for a wheel to be changed than men, but when it comes to mistakes with fuel – or to having accidents – men seem to be the riskier sex.
AA Rescue Call-Outs 2007:
| Total number of jobs: | 157,710 |
|---|---|
| Classification: | |
| Battery | 31.1% |
| Steering/Suspension/Brakes | 18.4% |
| Wheel change/tyre | 13.3% |
| Fuel | 10.9% |
| Engine & Exhaust | 8.6% |
| Locks & Alarms | 6.7% |
| Transmission | 6.7% |
| Ignition | 4.8% |
| Electrical | 4.5% |
| Body/Heating/Ventilation | 3.1% |
| Cooling | 2.8% |
| Charging | 2.4% |
The dreaded flat battery is the single biggest cause of breakdown, accounting for nearly 41,731 call outs or 31.1 per cent of the total. Of these, 25,575 were caused by vehicle defects but a full 16,156 were caused by driver error; often something as simple as leaving the lights on. The next most common problem is the simple wheel change, which was needed by 13.3 per cent of all callers. The data here shows that females are 76.5% more likely to ask for help changing a wheel than men.
Quite why this should be we don’t know. A wheel change is a normal part of the AA service, and on a rotten wet day no-one wants to change their own wheel while wearing new clothes or a business suit. But it seems that men are more likely to try to sort it themselves.
Locking the keys inside the car is a frustrating and often an embarrassing experience, but a surprisingly common one.
Whenever someone rings up to tell us they invariably say that they feel foolish, but it happens all the time. We had 3,823 cases last year. We have even had cases where the keys were locked inside along with a baby or small child. Thankfully its something the AA Patrol force is well used to and we can solve the problem. The data shows that this particular problem is slightly (12.9%) more likely to happen to women than men.
The much more serious problem of accident damage only accounts for 2.5% of AA call outs, and the caller is 26.4% more likely to be male than female. Steering, suspension, brakes, fuel problems and keys all caused tales of woe for Irish motorists as well, and these purely mechanical problems show no difference between the sexes.
New cars are by no means immune. The AA was called out to attend 13,581 07-registered cars last year, which is 8.6% of all call outs. The brand new cars had problems ranging from alarm faults to electrical faults to major mechanical breakdowns.
Fuel system problems accounted for 10.9% of all call outs. That figure includes 1,466 cases of running out of fuel and 1,133 cases of using the wrong fuel.
