Arrive Alive!

More healthy young women die in car crashes each year than from any other cause. Here's how not to be one of them.

Life in the fast lane Check out what this woman is doing right—and wrong—behind the wheel.

if you're like many women, you hop into the car in the morning in a rush. You may push the speedometer needle past the limit, but hey, you're keeping up with traffic. You save precious minutes by checking messages on your cell phone while sipping coffee. You're a little late, so maybe you try to beat a light or roll through a stop sign. When you do stop, what better time to scan the notes for your first appointment? After the light changes, you creep up on the slowpoke ahead, forcing him to speed up or move over.

If any part of this scenario sounds familiar to you, you're engaging in the automotive equivalent of playing with a loaded gun. And that's not an overstatement. More than 13,000 women die each year and another 1.5 million are injured in traffic accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in Washington, D.C. Unlike breast cancer and heart disease, traffic fatalities strike young women hardest. Crashes are the leading cause of accidental death and injury for women ages 25 to 34 and the third leading overall cause of death (after cancer and heart disease) for those 35 to 44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

And our risk is rising. Between 1975 and 2004, automotive deaths among women climbed 14 percent while those among men dropped by 10 percent. Most of that increase is because more of us are on the road, but at least one study, by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, found that younger women were adopting traditionally male dangerous-driving practices such as speeding and drinking.

Even if you don't zoom around aggressively, the way you run your errands may put you at higher risk. Women tend to do what experts call trip chaining. That means that instead of simply going directly from one place to another, women make multiple stops along the way. "Women stop at the gym, dry cleaner, grocery store. They're multitasking and can find themselves in more situations with more involvements with traffic," says Kristin Backstrom, president of Safe Smart Women, an organization in Silver Spring, Maryland, that promotes good driving and car care for women nationwide. With each destination, you make additional turns, change speeds and pull in and back out of parking spaces, all of which translates into more opportunities for an accident. And remember, even minor fender benders can leave you with an injury.

When do most of those accidents occur? Right now—that is, during the holiday season, when more people are on the road shopping, going to parties and, unfortunately, drinking and driving. Want to recharge your know-how in time for the long drive to the in-laws? Consider this your crash course.

It doesn't matter whether you hold your phone or go hands-free: Talking on your mobile while driving puts you at four times the usual risk of getting in a car accident. Hands-free technology does little to improve safety odds because it's the conversation, not the equipment, that distracts you. Chatting on the phone actually suppresses the type of brain activity needed to deal with traffic. In fact, one study has shown that a driver talking on a cell phone is as impaired as one with a 0.08 blood-alcohol level, the amount most states consider to be legally under the influence. "We compared the cell phone driver with the drunk driver; the cell phone driver did worse," says David Strayer, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. "People driving while on the cell are tuning in to their phone conversation and tuning out the road," Strayer says. "They can become blind to something that's happening right in front of them."

Cell phones aren't the only attention suck in your car. Sure, you have to check your mirrors, read road signs and, well, blink, but most of us do a lot more than we need to, says Sheila Garness Klauer, senior research associate at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) in Blacksburg, Virginia, and project manager on a study that recorded the habits of 240 drivers for a year using cameras mounted throughout their vehicles. Klauer witnessed drivers applying makeup, eating, reading—and crashing as a result. The scariest thing she saw: "a woman putting her contacts in while driving." At least 25 percent of all police-reported accidents are due to in-car distractions, according to the NHTSA. But experts agree the number is probably much higher. Who's going to admit she ran a light because she was looking for her Coldplay CD? The bottom line: Keep your eyes on the road and your mind in the moment.