Alabama men are more than twice as likely as women to die in motor vehicle crashes, according to data from the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Alabama Department of Transportation.

But it’s not just Alabama. This follows a national trend.

Between 2014 and 2016, the most recent year ADPH had available data, an average of 1,002 people died in Alabama in motor vehicle crashes each year. On average, 703 of those deaths, or 70 percent, were men.

That state average is roughly equivalent to the national average over that same span. From 2014-2016, an average of 35,345 people in the United States died in motor vehicle crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Around 71 percent of them were men.

There are many reasons why this might be the case, according to Allison Green, ALDOT’s Drive Safe Alabama coordinator.

“In general, men will engage in more risky behavior than women,” Green said. That includes driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, she said, but also speeding.

“Speeding is often the main contributing factor in a fatal crash,” Green said. “What might have been a minor incident, when you add speeding, makes it a fatal crash.”

Another main factor, according to Green, is safety restraints. Men are less likely than women to wear a seatbelt, which can be one of the biggest factors in fatal crashes.

ALDOT backed a bill that passed the legislature this week that would amend Alabama’s seatbelt law and make it a requirement for adults to wear a seatbelt in the back seat.

“People are dying because they don’t have that seatbelt on," Green said.

However, according to ALDOT, male drivers are only slightly more likely to be involved in a crash than female drivers. Men made up around 49 percent of all drivers involved in accidents in 2017. Women made up 44 percent, and 7 percent of drivers involved in accidents were unknown.

But when you look at the fatality numbers for that year, the discrepancy skyrockets. According to ALDOT data, men were driving during 70 percent of all fatal crashes, compared to women at 26 percent.

Motor vehicle deaths by the numbers

Proximity to a hospital is also a factor. Rural Alabama counties tend to experience a higher rate of traffic fatalities than more urban ones. Alabama’s Black Belt, especially sees a higher rate.

Alabama, along with many other states, has seen a number of rural hospital close in recent years. There are now nine Alabama counties that don’t have a hospital.

Half of the top ten deadliest counties in terms of motor vehicle accidents don’t have a hospital. That includes Coosa County, which between 2014 and 2016 led the state with 65.2 crash deaths per 100,000 people.

Alabama's rural counties tend to have a higher crash death rate than more urban ones.

ALDOT has extensive data on crashes going back several years. The agency’s latest Crash Facts report covers 2017, and includes statistics on time of crash, location, involvement of alcohol and more.

Some key takeaways:

Use a seatbelt. Almost 60 percent of people who died in crashes in 2017 weren’t wearing a seatbelt, even though only 3.6 percent of people involved in a crash weren’t wearing one.

More than half of all fatal crashes in Alabama in 2017 happened on two-lane roads.

82 percent of fatal crashes happened while roads were dry.

40.5 percent of all crashes in Alabama happened on city roads, but those roads only accounted for 13.6 percent of deaths. The most dangerous roads in 2017 were county roads. County roads were home to just 13.5 percent of all crashes that year, but they accounted for nearly 30 percent of all fatal crashes.

Sunday is both the least crash-prone day of the week and the highest fatality-prone day of the week.

Most crashes happen between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

The deadliest driving age is between 21 and 25 years old, according to data from ALDOT.

Do you have an idea for a data story about Alabama? Email Ramsey Archibald at rarchibald@al.com, and follow him on Twitter @RamseyArchibald. For more videos and stories like this, follow Reckon by AL.com on Facebook and Twitter.