Road violence becomes a gendered and systemic issue

In preparation for a recent meeting at Universidad de los Andes with the Agencia Nacional de Seguridad Vial - ANSV, I examined the report Siniestralidad vial de mujeres en Colombia. Un análisis con enfoque de género (ANSV, 2024), analyzing road traffic fatalities among women in Colombia. Although this topic isn’t at the core of my doctoral research, which focuses on gender, infrastructure, and care, the findings resonated deeply. They offered a timely reminder that road safety is not just a technical concern; it’s a matter of justice, care, and everyday survival for many, especially women caregivers.

Cover of the report Siniestralidad vial de mujeres en Colombia: Un análisis con enfoque de género (ANSV, 2024). Source: Agencia Nacional de Seguridad Vial – Observatorio Nacional de Seguridad Vial.

The report revealed a stark reality: between 2015 and 2022, road traffic incidents were the leading cause of violent death among women in Colombia, surpassing both homicides and suicides. Most of these women died not as drivers but as passengers or pedestrians, a pattern that reflects deeply entrenched gender roles and unequal access to safer, autonomous modes of mobility. And yet, this isn’t a conversation we’re having loudly enough. Why is the most common form of violent death among women still so invisible in public debate and policy?

Violent deaths of women in Colombia: comparison between homicides and road traffic incidents. Source: National Road Safety Agency (ANSV), 2024. Data from the National Institute of Legal Medicine and the National Road Safety Observatory. Graphic by ANSV Communications Unit.

However, this pattern is beginning to shift. A growing number of women are now riding motorcycles, both for work and for care-related travel. While this trend may signal increased autonomy and flexibility, it also reveals new layers of vulnerability. According to El País, a woman motorcyclist dies every 12 hours in Colombia. Between 2019 and 2023, female motorcycle deaths increased by 54%, outpacing the rise in male fatalities. Many of these women lacked proper training, licensing, or access to adequate safety gear. Others were drawn to motorcycles because of their affordability, efficiency, and even symbolic value, yet they ride in conditions of structural neglect. In the words of Ana María Puentes (El País, 2024), women are less skilled, but that they are riding the most dangerous vehicle in the country under the most precarious conditions.

 

What’s more, the 2024 Bogotá gender and mobility study, Caracterización de los patrones de movilidad en Bogotá con enfoque de género e interseccional (Sensata, 2024), revealed that many women perceive motorcycles not only as a practical option, but as a safer alternative to public transport. Women reported choosing motorcycles to reduce their exposure to sexual harassment, invasive stares, and physical proximity with aggressors, all common occurrences on buses, stations, and sidewalks. In this sense, the turn to motorcycles is not simply a matter of preference or independence. It is a strategy of risk management in a city where moving through public space means constantly weighing threats of gender-based violence.

Caracterización de los patrones de movilidad en Bogotá con enfoque de género e interseccional (Sensata, 2024)

This growing trend underscores the urgent need to question not only who dies on the road, but under what conditions people move, and who gets the training, infrastructure, and protection needed to survive. It also reveals the paradox of mobility for women in patriarchal cities: the more control women gain over how they move, the more they are held responsible for managing their own safety, often with few real options.

 

Yet the ANSV’s report stops short of deeper interrogation. It remains mostly descriptive, without engaging with the structural roots of risk or proposing transformative interventions. What’s missing is a conceptual leap, an understanding that road safety is not gender-neutral, and that the design of mobility systems has historically centered on male, able-bodied, productive users. We need more than statistics. We need questions: Why are women disproportionately killed as passengers? Why is caregiving travel invisible in safety strategies? And why are risk and speed still valorized in masculine driving cultures?

 

To expand the conversation, I turned to two additional sources: a report from Spain’s national traffic agency and a regional study from the Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory. Both documents emphasize the need to move away from androcentric transport planning. They call for a shift in paradigm, from car-centered systems to people-centered mobility. They also suggest reimagining safety itself: not just as the absence of crashes, but as the presence of dignity, inclusion, and freedom from fear.

 

These perspectives remind us that masculinity, as currently constructed, is often tied to risk-taking, control, and a disregard for vulnerability, traits that are embedded in traffic behavior, vehicle design, and even policy language. Meanwhile, the voices of women and caregivers are still largely missing from planning tables, where crucial decisions about infrastructure, enforcement, and investment are made.

 

To deepen this analysis, I find it useful to draw on the concept of petro-masculinity, proposed by political theorist Cara Daggett. Petro-masculinity refers to the entanglement of fossil fuel systems with patriarchal and authoritarian structures, particularly in how fossil fuels support identities of dominance, control, and violence. Daggett argues that fossil fuels are not just energy sources, they are symbols and instruments of a gendered order that privileges toughness, rigidity, and explosive power, often associated with masculine identity.

 

When translated into the domain of mobility, this framework helps us understand why speed, individualism, and engine-powered vehicles (especially motorcycles and cars) have been historically coded as masculine, while walking, caregiving mobility, or public transport are feminized or devalued. The exaltation of risk and speed is not accidental; it’s part of a social imaginary where dominating the road becomes a way of reaffirming masculine power, even at the cost of one’s own safety, or the safety of others.

 

Seen from this angle, road violence becomes a gendered and systemic issue, not just a problem of individual behavior. The motorized dominance that defines most cities is, in many ways, a material expression of petro-masculinity, one that punishes slower, more collective, and relational forms of movement. It is no coincidence that in a country like Colombia, women’s efforts to reclaim autonomy through motorcycles occur in a context where infrastructure, licensing systems, and enforcement regimes still privilege the dominant, petro-masculine subject.

 

In short, the conversation around road safety must be reframed. It’s not just about better signals, stricter laws, or smarter cars. It’s about asking: Who moves? How? And with what dignity?

 

When we center care, equity, and intersectionality, we not only imagine safer mobility, we challenge the very structures that normalize risk, invisibilize caregiving, and replicate gendered injustice on our streets. Feminist approaches remind us that transforming infrastructure is not only about technical innovation, but about redistributing power, recognizing labor, and protecting life.

 

References

 

1. Agencia Nacional de Seguridad Vial. (2024). Siniestralidad vial en mujeres en Colombia. Un análisis con enfoque de género. ANSV.

2. Col·lectiu Punt 6 & OISEVI. (2023). La seguridad vial desde la perspectiva de género: análisis y recomendaciones para políticas públicas. Observatorio Iberoamericano de Seguridad Vial. https://www.oisevi.org/

3. Daggett, C. (2018). Petro-masculinity: Fossil fuels and authoritarian desire. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 47(1), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818775817

4. Dirección General de Tráfico. (2022). La seguridad vial con perspectiva de género. Gobierno de España. https://www.dgt.es/

5. El País. (2024, noviembre 4). Las mujeres que se suben a la moto en Colombia corren más peligro: una fallecida cada 12 horas. https://elpais.com/america-colombia/2024-11-04/las-mujeres-que-se-suben-a-la-moto-en-colombia-corren-mas-peligro-una-fallecida-cada-12-horas.html

6. Sensata & Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad. (2024). Caracterización de los patrones de movilidad en Bogotá con enfoque de género e interseccional. Bogotá.

 

 

Moving without fear: why does sexual harassment in public transport still lack justice?

Moving around the city should be an everyday and free right: to study, work, visit a friend, or simply enjoy public spaces without fear. However, for many women and members of LGBTI social sectors, public transport has become a territory of risk. Every journey is a silent negotiation with fear, a constant vigilance over one’s body and surroundings. According to a diagnosis based on the 2023 Mobility Survey and the report Caracterización de los patrones de movilidad en Bogotá con enfoque de género e interseccional, conducted by Sensata, CAF, and Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad, although women make 45.96% of daily trips and account for 55.68% of public transport users, they bear the greatest burden of violence: 90.42% of reported sexual assault victims in the system are women. The most common forms of aggression include leering (17.46%), unwanted touching (13.08%), and obscene comments (7.12%). Sexual harassment, in the form of comments, gestures, unwanted touching, and non-consensual physical contact, has ceased to be an exceptional threat and has instead become a daily experience that shapes movements and limits autonomy.

Image source: @hasslofficial on Instagram. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/hasslofficial

Although Colombia has recognized the crime of sexual harassment in its Penal Code since 2008 (Article 210A), in practice, the path to justice for victims remains full of obstacles. Not only is it difficult to report these incidents, but even when women manage to do so, their cases are often dismissed or misclassified. The gravest problem is not simply the low chances of achieving justice, but that many reported acts are treated as minor offenses, such as “insult through physical means,” rather than being recognized as sexual harassment. This misclassification strips victims of the full acknowledgment of the harm they have suffered and subjects them to processes that often end in forced conciliation, discouraging them from seeking reparation.

This daily violence unfolds during the most routine journeys: at a crowded station, on a packed bus where an anonymous hand brushes against the body without consent, or during a hurried walk to a deserted bus stop. These are fleeting aggressions, but they leave deep marks. They are not isolated incidents: according to the study by Sensata, CAF, and Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad, 44.9% of women surveyed reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment during their journeys, with young women aged 14 to 24 being the most exposed. Each invasive look, each unwanted touch, each obscene word adds an invisible burden that shapes how women and LGBTI people navigate the city, forcing them to design defensive routes rather than freely chosen paths.

Image source: @hasslofficial on Instagram. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/hasslofficial

The difficulty in accessing justice does not stem solely from individual barriers, but from a structurally indifferent system. As evidenced by the psycho-legal support teams of the Secretaría Distrital de la Mujer, in their daily work, many victims choose not to report because they fear they will not be believed, because they could not clearly identify the aggressor, or because they feel it is not worth facing a system that, instead of protecting them, often revictimizes them. Even when evidence exists, such as security camera footage, its use is restricted and does not always translate into effective judicial action. Moreover, in cases of sexual harassment, the law often requires victims to prove “systematic behavior” or a “position of power” by the perpetrator, a nearly impossible burden in the context of public transport where most aggressors are strangers and attacks are rapid and unexpected.

The consequences of sexual harassment are not merely physical. They are silent, intimate, yet profound. Each unwanted touch, each vulgar comment, accumulates in the body’s memory and reshapes how women experience the city. Many end up changing their routes, avoiding going out at night, modifying the way they dress, or walking constantly on alert. Harassment not only limits mobility; it also undermines the right to inhabit public space with freedom and dignity.

Image source: @hasslofficial on Instagram. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/hasslofficial

However, when we talk about justice, it should not be reduced to criminal proceedings. Reparation for victims can and must go far beyond judicial convictions. For some women, justice might mean the perpetrator performing community service, such as cleaning public spaces or undergoing mandatory training on violence prevention. For others, reparation could mean a public apology, an effective social sanction, or simply public acknowledgment that what they experienced was violence, not an “exaggeration” or a “misunderstanding.”

Proposals for alternative sanctions, such as those contemplated in the Normative Proposal for Addressing Sexual Harassment in Bogotá’s Public Space (UN Women), which reforms Agreements 073 of 2003 and 735 of 2019 to include administrative sanctions for street harassment, aim precisely at this: creating closer, faster, and more meaningful mechanisms of response for victims. These proposals suggest that beyond the criminal route, administrative mechanisms should exist to sanction harassment behaviors through fines, community service, mandatory human rights training, or bans from accessing certain public spaces.

The idea behind alternative sanctions is not to replace criminal justice but to complement it, recognizing the complexity of sexual harassment in public spaces and the enormous difficulties victims face within judicial processes. When women encounter stalled investigations, conciliations with their aggressors, or face nearly impossible evidentiary burdens, such as proving the systematic nature of attacks committed by strangers, they not only relive the trauma but also see their pain minimized or dismissed.

Image source: @hasslofficial on Instagram. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/hasslofficial

Because when the justice system fails, the harm is compounded: not only does one suffer the initial attack, but also the institutional indifference. Not being heard, not being believed, and not finding a clear path to reparation deepen the original violence. That is why opening alternative routes of sanction, where harm is named, made visible, and repaired in agile and culturally transformative ways, is also an act of justice.

Accessing justice means recognizing that sexual harassment is neither an isolated event nor merely a case of “misbehavior,” but a structural expression of power and gender inequality. It means transforming transport systems to make them safer, but also transforming collective imaginaries that still blame women for their own victimization. It means understanding that acting after harm is not enough: prevention must start from shared social responsibility, recognizing that building safe public spaces is not solely the task of victims or authorities but of the entire community. Crucially, it requires that men, and masculinities, in the plural, actively engage in rejecting and preventing harassment, embodying positive, non-violent, and responsible masculinities that affirm women’s right to inhabit the city freely and without fear. Accessing justice, in its broadest sense, also means listening to those who have lived through fear in buses, stations, and streets. And asking ourselves, with honesty and courage: what are we willing to change so that moving through the city is no longer, for so many women, an act of daily resistance?

Image source: @hasslofficial on Instagram. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/hasslofficial

References

1. Hoyos Pulido, C. A. Normative Proposal for Addressing Sexual Harassment in Bogotá’s Public Space. UN Women.

2. Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad de Bogotá. (2023). Mobility Survey.

3. UN Women. (2019). Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces for Women and Girls Global Programme.

4. Secretaría Distrital de la Mujer. (2025). Tools and Socio-Legal Challenges of Sexual Harassment Against Women. Bogotá, Colombia.

5. Sensata UX Research. (2024). Characterization of Mobility Patterns in Bogotá with a Gender and Intersectional Perspective. Bogotá Mobility Secretariat, CAF.