Men are twice more dangerous than women when it comes to driving, the Institute of Advanced Motorist have found in a recent study.

IAM's latest research Licensed to skill: Contributory factors in road accidents 2011 shows that men are more likely than women to be involved in crashes because of bad driving habits such as driving too fast, drink-driving or being careless, reckless or in a hurry. They are also more likely to crash because of poor behaviour or inexperience.

The data was collected from police accident reports from 2005 to 2009 and covered over 700,000 pieces of information related to that number of cases.

Although the evidence shows predominance of male weakness behind the steering wheel, almost twice as many men as women claim to be "very confident" drivers, the IAM says.

"These results show that we need to look at the psychology of male drivers to reduce risky behaviour and over-confidence, but for both sexes accidents could be easily reduced by improving driver skills and lives could be saved," said IAM chief executive Simon Best.

Referring to new government measures on reckless driving, he added: "The government is moving towards this by introducing driver training for careless driving offences but all drivers should consider training. Driving is a life-long skill that requires life-long learning."

According to the study, the only contributory factors for an accident under which female drivers perform worse than male, are road environment and affected vision.

The top ten factors involved in a car accident are also different depending on gender. 'Impaired by alcohol' appears in the top ten for men (reported for 4% of crashes) whereas 'Learner or inexperienced driver' is in the top ten for women (reported for 3% of women driving a car involved in an accident).

The overall most dangerous factor, regardless the gender, remains"driver error/ reaction," which is responsible of 67.5% of all accidents, from which 65% are fatal.

A previous study commissioned by the IAM showed that both men and women enjoy being on the road and consider themselves overall to be safe and competent drivers.