Boys are twice as likely to be killed on the roads as girls, according to a Government study that has prompted calls for compulsory road safety training for young males.

Parents who give their sons more freedom than their daughters may unwittingly be contributing to the higher death rate for boys, who are more likely to take risks.

The study, carried out by the Department for Transport, found that 64 per cent of the under16s killed or seriously injured on the roads in 2006 were male.

Almost 1,300 boy pedestrians were killed or seriously injured, compared with 700 girls. The difference was even greater among child cyclists – more than 400 boys were killed or seriously injured, compared with fewer than 100 girls.

The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety said that the casualty rate among boys was higher partly because they spent more time on the streets unsupervised and partly because they engaged in riskier behaviour.

Robert Gifford, the council’s director, said: “The special protectiveness that some parents have towards their daughters might be better applied to their sons. They let their sons walk or cycle on their own but not their daughters, even though it is boys who deliberately take more risks without fully appreciating the dangers.”

He said that schools were failing to give children road safety education when they most needed it.

“There is a lot of attention on educating primary school children about crossing the road but very little material for use in secondary schools. At the point when children are being allowed out on their own, the education often ceases.”

Edmund King, the president of the AA, said that male teenagers should have extra road safety lessons designed specifically for them.

He said that the higher casualty rate among young males continued into their late teens and early twenties. At this stage, rather than being the victims of their own risky behaviour, they often turned into reckless drivers and posed a serious risk to others.

Research by the AA has found that male drivers aged 17 to 20 are two and a half times more likely to be killed or seriously injured per mile travelled than female drivers of the same age.

Mr King said that driver training should be reformed to include special lessons for young males.

The Government is planning to introduce an extended learning period for trainee drivers, which will mean fewer 17-year-olds passing their tests. There have been calls for the minimum driving age to be raised to 18.

Mr King said: “We have to ask whether it is fair to discriminate against young women drivers by making them comply with a new training system primarily designed to deal with a young male problem. We need to start tackling the attitudes of young males at a much earlier age.”

The DfT study found that overall child road deaths and serious injuries had fallen by 52 per cent in the past ten years. Deaths now amount to only a third of the number of children killed on the roads in the early 1980s. There were 169 child deaths in 2006 compared with 500 to 600 each year from 1980 to 1985.

The greatest improvement has been in the death rate of children under 11. Casualties have fallen more slowly among those aged 11 to 15.

More than a quarter - 27 per cent – of child pedestrian casualties in 2006 came on journeys to or from school. The peak time for child injuries was 3pm to 4pm followed by 8am to 9am.

Britain has one of the lowest overall road death rates in Europe, beaten only by the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. But it comes much lower down the league table for child pedestrian deaths, with 0.6 per 1,000 children in 2005 compared with 0.2 in Sweden, 0.3 in France and the Netherlands and 0.4 in Germany and Spain.

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