Toxic masculinity fuels dangerous driving like drink and drugs, French campaign says

‘Speed, alcohol, drugs, fatigue … what if we need to add masculinity? advert asks

Toxic masculinity could be just as dangerous as drink or drugs in contributing to road deaths, a new safety campaign in France says.

The French government has launched the initative seeking to combat the fact that men made up 78 per cent of those killed on the country’s roads last year. While that isn’t far from the EU average, the figure rises to 88 per cent of drivers aged 18 to 24 killed on the road last year. Of people suspected to have caused road accidents, 84 per cent were men, while men accounted for 93% of drunk drivers involved in an accident.

An advert, which has gone out online, TV and in cinemas, shows men at the birth of their children, portraying them as sensitive, in contrast to macho stereotypes.

“Speed, alcohol, drugs, fatigue … what if we need to add masculinity?” it says.

The video urges men to resist social pressure to behave in certain ways, telling male drivers that they don’t have to follow “what people expected of them.”

A caption reads: “On the road, 8 out of 10 deaths are men. Be the man you want to be, but be a living man.”

In a press release accompanying the video, officials said that stereotypes perpetuate the idea that men “unlike women, have a form of natural aptitude for driving, ironically resulting in transforming excessive speed, dangerous overtaking or the certainty of ‘holding the alcohol’ into signs of an entirely masculine skill.”

Florence Guillaume, the interministerial delegate for road safety in France, said the campaign was not about stigmatising or blaming men in general.

“It is about prompting people to examine their behaviour,” she said.

Ms Guillaume said the number of men dying on the roads was a serious issue and “does not mean all men are bad drivers – that is not true”.

She added that society should look deeper at behaviours such as risk-taking or the pressures on some men to show they could drive faster or seek to dominate the road.

As part of the campaign, Alain Mergier, a sociologist, conducted a study into masculinity and driving across all age groups.

He found that some boys and men were taught from childhood that cars were a symbol that could defend their “manliness”.

“It’s striking how certain stereotypes are persistently passed from father to son, including the car as a symbolic object of masculinity, male identity and virility,” he said.

“This isn’t given much thought and yet we can see the far-reaching impact on accidents.”