Is it true that female drivers can get cheaper car insurance than men? For most of the auto insurance companies, the answer is “yes.” Auto insurers in the US, UK, and Australia offer discount insurance rates for female drivers, as they believe that women are statistically safer drivers.
But in Europe, a decision will soon be made to stop this situation. On March 1, the European Court of Justice will be likely to rule that using gender to determine insurance premiums is unlawful.
Females Should Get Cheaper Auto Insurance: Sexist or Statistics?
On February 16, UK Prime Minister David Cameron criticized the forthcoming rules, saying that women should have lower auto insurance rates as they are “on the whole have better safety driving records than men.” But is that true?
According to a survey from the Australian insurance company AAMI, 84 percent of men and 77 percent of women have crashed their vehicles. But the statistics don’t take into account the number of miles men and women drive – in fact men do about 60 to 65 percent more driving than women, according to Car-Accidents.com.
Another research study may be more persuasive than the previous one. According to the 2001 car accident report from the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, male drivers in fatal crashes per 100 million miles decreased from 4.9 to 2.9 between 1977 and 1995, while women drivers in fatal crashes per million miles dropped from 2.9 to 1.7. But there is another question: Is it possible that most of the extra fatal crashes happened when men do the 60 to 65 percent extra driving? When a man has to drive more, he is more likely to get tired and have a car accident.
Pay as You Drive: Get Cheaper Car Insurance Based on How You Drive
Today a female car owner can easily get low-cost online quotes from the best insurance companies such as Geico, Esurance, Allstate, State Farm, and American Family. But even if it is statistically true that women are better drivers, it is still unfair that all the members of the male community should pay more. This is why we give the same bonuses to the male and female players in the Wimbledon Championships, though men are physically stronger and play more games there.
Maybe Pay as You Drive could be a better alternative than calculating car insurance based on gender – you drive better, you pay less, whether you are a woman or not.
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Chen Nanyang - Chen Nanyang's journalist career began in 2002 when he started writing for China's Nanfang City News, Singapore's United Morning Post and ...
