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If the car in front brakes sharply just before a speed camera and then accelerates back over the limit, it’s a fair bet that it’s being driven by a man rather than a woman.

A study has found that women view speed cameras very differently from men: they are much more likely to comply with them, twice as likely to want more cameras in their area and more willing to believe that they save lives.

Significantly fewer women than men — 36 per cent compared with 52 per cent — believed that the purpose of cameras was to make easy money from drivers, according to research by Brunel University.It interviewed 1,100 people, selected randomly at petrol stations, to produce the most comprehensive study to date of how gender influences attitudes to speeding.

More than half (56 per cent) of women said that they complied with cameras, compared with 43 per cent of men. A quarter of women said that they slowed down only briefly for cameras, compared with 39 per cent of men.

The study concluded that road safety policy was flawed because it failed to acknowledge that male attitudes to speed were the greatest problem and that men were far more likely than women to drive at well over the speed limit.

Speed awareness courses, which are offered by many police forces as an alternative to three penalty points, are restricted to drivers who have exceeded the limit to a small degree. Men are more likely than women to have been driving too fast to qualify for the courses. The study said that men were missing out on opportunities to be educated about the dangers of speeding.

Claire Corbett, director of Brunel’s criminal justice research group and author of the study, said that government policy on speeding should take more account of the difference in attitudes between men and women. She suggested that policy was influenced too strongly by the male view, which was propagated by anti- camera groups dominated by men.

All five directors of the Association of British Drivers, the most vocal anti-camera group, are men and its 2,500-strong membership is overwhelmingly male.

Ms Corbett said: “Our findings and those of other research together show that women tend to drive more safely and think more about driving and road-safety matters than men. It is therefore important that the views of both sexes inform any decision by policymakers to change speed limits or to adjust speed enforcement policy.

“Women are more compliant in their behaviour and it seems that men are more keen, perhaps biologically and culturally, to engage in risky behaviour.”

The Government announced reforms to camera funding last year in response to claims that cameras were being used to generate revenue. From next April, police and local authority camera partnerships will no longer be allowed to keep any of the revenue from camera fines. Road safety groups are concerned that partnerships will be under pressure to reduce spending on camera enforcement.

Ms Corbett’s conclusions are supported by Home Office figures, which show that men accounted for almost nine out of ten motoring convictions in 2004. The proportion of men increases with the severity of the offence, with men accounting for 97 per cent of convictions for dangerous driving and 94 per cent for causing death or bodily harm. Women were guilty of 18 per cent of speeding offences dealt with by courts.

Separate figures published by the Department for Transport in September found that eight times more men than women involved in crashes had broken the speed limit.

Ms Corbett said it was likely that the number of speed-camera penalties attributed to women was increased by husbands passing on their points to their wives to avoid an automatic driving ban for accumulating twelve points within three years.

A survey last year by Churchill Insurance found that 2.2 per cent of drivers admitted to taking points on behalf of their partners. With 33 million licence-holders, this is the equivalent of 726,000 drivers. Almost all the 2.2 per cent were women.

The Association of British Drivers said that women might be less likely to speed because they were more likely to have children in the car. “A male sales rep might drive quite differently because he is driving on his own.”

The association had “one or two” women members but tended to attract men, it said. “Most women see a car as something to get you from A to B and, unlike men, they don’t form an emotional attachment to it.”