"Anyone in Car Insurance" ..... Part deux.

Fair points, well made

 

I could be wrong on this but I saw the seatbelt thing the other day and someone replied saying that while it's true that all car safety features were designed based on the average man from the 1970s there is a much bigger range in male body sizes (presumably height) which means that the average body size of a man actually closely matched more women's sizes than mens and that with the increase in average height over the years it even more closely matches women now and much less men. Headrests for example are next to useless for a lot of men but not so for most women.

Could be wrong because it's just what I saw someone reply with but it does make sense

 

It’s more that women have boobs and lower bone density. The standard test dummy is 1.77m tall and 79kg based on the 50th percentile man. Even when women are occasionally taken into account, it’s a scaled down male dummy that is used.

Women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, 71% more likely to be moderately injured and 17% more likely to die, all things being equal in a crash.

 

''Traditionally, car insurers would offer women cheaper premiums on the basis of their gender, drawing on statistics that indicate women are less likely than men to speed and engage in other risky driving behaviour. But is this still the case?

A decade ago, the European Court of Justice ruled that taking gender into account when calculating car insurance premiums violated EU gender equality legislation. Regulations banning the practice came into effect in December 2012 and remain in force in the UK although we’ve since left the EU.

Under the law, insurers can’t automatically discount your premiums if you’re a woman or increase them if you’re a man. However, in practice, men continue to pay more for their car insurance than women because they’re more likely to have other factors that increase premiums, such as penalty points, driving convictions, high-powered cars, higher mileage, and occupations insurers judge as riskier.

 

The reality is that regardless of the law insurers do charge women less. Put the exact same details in and change the gender, premium goes down

 

This, very much.

I'm 70 next year so I'll have to renew my licence, which will be just a formality. I think I should have to undergo a test. Not a full driving test, but a simplified version which tests my eyesight, reaction time, highway code knowledge and basic driving skills. Possibly a doctor's report, although that would add red tape.

As others have said, it causes family stress when children have to try to convince a parent to give up driving. A test would take this out of the children's hands. It's sad when someone has to give up driving, but the safety of other road users is more important.

 

It might be the law to not discriminate by sex - but it’s absolute rubbish - we did the same quote for my lad as though he was female (still aged seventeen, me and the mrs named etc etc) - that particular quote went from £4200 for ‘him’ to £1980 for ‘her’ - less than half.

I get the stats back that young drivers cause most damage and harm - so I get premiums being more - but I’ll not be convinced that this isnt a complete profiteering racket. There are thousands and thousands of kids driving round like a parish vicar with a black box wired up, paying sometimes £5k a year.

My step dad’s mum is 84, she’s had four accidents in the last five years all requiring claims, one in which she hospitalised herself and another driver, and wrote off two of the vehicles in that time. (Mark and his sister have convinced her to stop now thankfully, she had been stubborn about it. It is hard, she’s widowed and the car was a lifeline to daily company for her).

Anyway, with all of the above, they quoted her for a year back in September - £597 fully comprehensive on a 2017 Nissan Micra. Zero no claims, four accidents in the last five years, though no points, 84 turning 85.

If they can insure her - with let’s face it at least an 80% likelihood that she’d have an accident in the year which would need a claim and a decent likelihood it could be a bad one - for £600 (if she had no accidents at all the price would have been about £230 I think Mark said), then there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that they are taking the same profit margin from 17-25 males as they are all other groups.

There’s no wonder there’s so many kids drive without insurance. It’s exorbitantly expensive and my lad would have no chance if he didn’t have us and his grandparents to help him.

In New Zealand motor insurance isn’t completely mandatory. Their accident stats are broadly similar in both the numbers of claims per driver and age brackets of most claims etc - my mate pays nz$700 a year fully comprehensive, no excesses, on a brand new Audi Q4. I got him to do a quote on an old small car(not sure what he chose), same details for the lad other than him living at my mates’ on the outskirts of Tauranga (Mount Maunganui) and with a full nz licence just out of interest - nz$1400 fully comprehensive. Thats about £650.

Ok the roads out there aren’t likely as busy so it isn’t necessarily comparing apples and apples I know - but paying five to ten times more over here is nonsense.

And I don’t think they’ve even heard of black boxes over there either !

 

I really sympathise - it must be so hard to get a driving history these days as a young kid. They are paying monthly payments for the insurance that are more than middle aged adults are paying for a new car. Insurance for everyone has pretty much doubled in the space of just a few years, which obviously has a more pronounced effect when it was expensive to start with. But potentially the difference in risk in your comparison is that the old dear who keeps having accidents is likely to be submitting claims that amount to several thousand pounds. But if a reckless inexperienced kid causes a pile up of the likes I described earlier, with multiple serious injuries, then the bill for the insurance company might be measured in millions not thousands. It only takes one and that wipes out the profit from several thousand premiums. Ultimately the bigger cost to the insurance company is not the metal, it's the damage to the humans.

 

I offer no argument against the logic - but I’m still not having they aren’t taking advantage of the situation.