Why car insurers are biased about your gender
Women drivers save up to 40% on their insurance premiums compared to their male counterparts thanks to their gender. That is because most of their accidents are “fender-benders”, unlike men whose vehicle repair claims are generally substantially higher.
Gender is important to insurance companies. Statistics prove that women have around 20% fewer road accidents than men. They also have repair costs of about 35% less than men.
How Insurance Companies Regard the Female Gender
South Africa’s short-term insurance industry base premium payments for females on a number of criteria, including the following:
- Women take fewer risks on the road
- Women make more careful decisions when driving
- And women generally abide by speed limits
It is common insurance practice to use gender as a variable when rating premiums based on risk factors. Men incur a higher risk profile than females. And it is this for this reason that men pay more for car insurance.
Ironically, statistics show that although men are involved in fewer accidents than women, they cause more severe damage to their vehicles because of their tendency to speed and take risks on the road.
Statistics also show that from middle age, women have more “fender-bender” accidents. That could be because of distractions such as small children in the car.
Generally, women drive cheaper vehicles than men. This is annother factor that impacts in favour of lower premium rates for women. About 75% of women with vehicle insurance drive vehicles that cost less than R250 000. Compare this to more than 70% of men.
Distractions on the road
There are many arguments about which sex drives paying more attention. Statistics both locally and abroad indicate that men are the bigger culprits, particularly when it comes to the fairer sex.
Apparently, 51% of men surveyed admitted to being distracted behind the wheel when seeing an attractive woman on the sidewalk as opposed to 15% female drivers admitting to the same fault when spotting a “hunk”.
According to the South African insurance company, 1st for Women Insurance, men in higher income brackets are involved in more distracted accidents than the rest. Is it because men in fancy cars think they are more desirable?
Well not according to another survey which found that the majority of women interviewed found such attention from men in fancy cars as a display of self-centred arrogance.
Conclusion
Distracted driving is anathema and drivers should concentrate on the road and ignore outside influences at all times, said the 1st for Women spokesman.
It has also been found that women take fewer risks, do not approve of road rage, and are more likely than men to abide by the speed limit while driving.
They are also better insurance risks because the cost of repairing their vehicles is generally lower than those of male drivers.
Most importantly, according to statistics, the road accident death rate of men is 60% higher than women, particularly in the 25 to 34 year age bracket.
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All info was correct at time of publishing December 15, 2017
