[asfdsfggtfd]

What does them being male have to do with anything?

Are you implying that being male means that they must be reckless? Or that if they were female they would automatically be careful and gentle? Careful throwing around those negative stereotypes.

EDIT: The driver is likely to be getting shot at. This is going to be an order of magnitude more important than slight gender differences.

[kbutler]

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

"Motor vehicle crash fatalities were higher for males than females in all age groups, while the male population is equal to or less than the female population in all age groups."

Particularly in the 21-30 age group, males had 3x the fatalities of females.

[dsfyu404ed]

That has little bearing on the cost of fielding/maintaining a vehicle. Fatalities are so rare they won't have an impact maintenance costs unless a sizeable chunk of your fleet is getting driven off a cliff.

In my experience men and women tend to be about equally hard on things. The male outliers tend to create more maintenance work by being hard on chassis/suspension ("hold my beer and watch this"). The female outliers tend to create more maintenance work by keeping quiet about problems (usually having to do with fluids not in their proper places) for far too long.

The most expensive driver is the kind that blindly follows directions/orders into a dumb situation.

Source: Did fleet maintenance in high-school.

edit: The words "in my experience" and "outliers" were used for a reason. I'm not claiming that all men will get a mini-bus airborne if given the opportunity or that all women will ignore an obvious puddle in a parking spot. I am stating what patterns I observed in the noteworthy cases of neglect. There's a million uncontrolled variables, maybe we were just a really scary maintenance department and none of the women wanted to talk to us or something. I'm not claiming that a bunch high school teachers a decade ago is a sample that accurately represents the rest of the population. Maybe the way buses were assigned to teams (pseudorandom) resulted in the observed failure pattern.

[kbutler]

I looked for statistics on maintenance cost of equipment for male vs female operators but didn't find any, just the un-documented assertions in https://www.equipmentworld.com/men-vs-women-who-are-the-bett... that basically say women are easier on equipment and specifically

  Attention to detail
  “I’ve always been impressed by how women take care of 
  their machines” Smith says. “They keep them clean and 
  don’t leave trash in the cabs. If there was a drop of 
  oil coming out of a wheel or something small like that 
  they let you know about it.”

I'd be happy to look at any statistics you can provide that show "equally hard on things".

[dsfyu404ed]

>I looked for statistics on maintenance cost of equipment for male vs female operators but didn't find any, just the un-documented assertions

Ok, well my undocumented assertion is roughly the opposite. Where does that leave us?

>I'd be happy to look at any statistics you can provide that show "equally hard on things".

Post on /r/mechanicadvice, dump out the 80% that were written by someone who's never actually turned a wrench and sift through what's left?

Regarding trash specifically I think the difference between a company vehicle and a personal vehicle is going to make a bigger difference than gender.

[kbutler]

> Where does that leave us?

I guess it leaves us at, "Statistically, three times as many young adult male drivers have fatal accidents than equivalent young female drivers, despite having a smaller population."

[psergeant]

> What does them being male have to do with anything?

Being young and male correlates strongly with high testosterone, the effects of which you can Google for. Being young and male also correlates with higher incidences of road traffic accidents than most other demographics.

[asfdsfggtfd]

But there are millions of young males in the US alone who are more careful than millions of young females.

The effects of testosterone are far from as simple as you suggest. It tends to lead to higher competitiveness. This is not quite the same as recklessness.

Meanwhile during normal usage the driver (of whatever gender) is likely to be getting shot at. This will tend to have a larger affect than their gender.

[psergeant]

> there are millions of young males in the US alone who are more careful than millions of young females

Yes, and millions of young men in the US who are shorter than millions of young women. What’s your point? Young men are still disproportionately more likely to be in road traffic accidents.

Re testosterone, the keywords you should be searching for are “risk taking behaviour”.

I’m curious also what percentage of time you think the average military driver is being shot at is.

[belorn]

Looking at a few studies, the data is much more complex. For example, higher levels of circulating testosterone were associated with lower risk aversion among women (r = −0.1793; P = 0.01), but not among men (P = 0.11). However at comparably low concentrations of testosterone the gender difference in risk aversion disappeared, suggesting that testosterone has nonlinear effects on risk aversion regardless of gender.

Or to make a summery of the summery of the study: there is an association of risk aversion when going from low levels of testosterone to very low levels, but "male with high testosterone" is not supported in that study as increased risk taking behavior vs males with normal levels of testosterone.

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741240/)

[Cthulhu_]

> Young men are still disproportionately more likely to be in road traffic accidents.

And in the military, given how e.g. the draft has never applied to women. Times are changing, but very, very slowly, and there will always be a gender disparity due to physical differences (e.g. strength, see also: almost every sport)

[asfdsfggtfd]

Being shot is the most important time. This is when the wheel is going to be put under the most stress and it is most important that it performs...

[0xfeba]

> Meanwhile during normal usage the driver (of whatever gender) is likely to be getting shot at. This will tend to have a larger affect than their gender.

No -- being shot at is 0-2% of your time deployed. The rest is waiting around.

[asfdsfggtfd]

Being shot is the most important time. This is when the wheel is going to be put under the most stress...

[jbjorge]

Weeeeell, we do have statistics for how civilians drive based on gender.

[mcguire]

Note: the driver is unlikely to get shot at. Combat is actually rare.

[asfdsfggtfd]

Being shot is the most important time. This is when the wheel is going to be put under the most stress and it is most important that it performs...