One man in five dies before the age of 65.
TOGETHER we can change that.

Men twice as daft when driving?

30/07/14 . Blog

A recent survey posed the question 'Have you held a mobile phone whilst driving in the last 30 days?'

One in ten men - 10.0% - admitted to using a mobile phone while driving but only 4.5% of women claimed the same. The survey's funders - a car leasing company - say 'this could show a worrying imbalance in men’s levels of complacency towards road safety when driving.'

They suggest that the problem is getting worse citing an observational survey by the Department for Transport in 2009 - five years ago - which showed that 1.4% of car drivers used a hand-held mobile device while driving. 

They also refer to an RAC poll which supposedly showed that 12% of drivers didn’t know that texting whilst driving was illegal and that 21% of drivers didn’t know that using social media on a mobile whilst driving is illegal. You have to laugh. Who are the 9% who think that social media is OK but texting isn't!? 

Is it really true that in any traffic jam, at least one bloke is probably on his mobile and a couple more on Facebook? No wonder they're working on the self-driving car.

The Men’s Health Forum need your support

It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking.

In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to.

It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for.

We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing.

Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.

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Charity registered in England and Wales (no. 1087375). Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (no. 4142349).