It’s a common belief among men that women tend to be worse drivers. If that is the case, then why are men’s auto insurance rates higher? I was unable to find any statistics on this, but I would think that insurance companies use statistical averages to help determine rates.
Personally, I’ve seen several bad drivers (inattentive, aggressive) of both genders, but there must be some reason men have to pay more for car insurance.
FTR, I am female but readily admit that my husband is a better driver than I am, not because he is a male, but because he has perfect vision, better reaction time and reflexes, and more experience responding to emergencies. (He’s a nurse.)
If we define “better drivers” as persons who get into fewerr accidents requiring insurance coverage, then overall, women are the superior drivers, on average. Insurance companies have tons and tons and tons of data that show this. But the difference is not huge.
I think you have to be a little more specific on what you mean by “accident.”
IIRC, women cause more “minor” automobile accidents vs. men, where there is little (if any) personal injury. Men by contrast are responsible for more “major” accidents where one or more persons is seriously injured or killed.
As tempting as it sometimes is to ascribe bad driving to a gender, I don’t think it’s valid. Some humans are just not good at controlling vehicles, for a wide variety of reasons.
I agree with ** Crafter_Man **:
I have never heard of a serious accident where the driver was a woman, but my mother gives her VW beetle new scratches every two months…
Still, the worst drivers seem to be the aged ones who go on driving, when they should have stopped years ago. Wasn’t there an accident yesterday with a 86-year old guy killing 9 people ?
Clearly insurance rates tell us diddly-squat unless they are qualified with certain other essential data, particularly if women as a “class” of drivers tend to have lower mileage rates than men the accidents per driver-year rate will be skewed downwards, I guess the OP is asking for accidents per driver-mile, even then we’d have to be careful to match them by car-type, usage-type, etc.
(Not that this is the same thing at all…) can we explain the dearth of women who have been successful in competitive driving?
I believe another couple of factors need to be taken into account. When it comes to couples the insurance policy will generally be in the mans name (certainly in UK). However as it is invariably the woman who have so many ‘minor’ accidents, when claimed whos premium goes up? the policy holders, of course.
Men by nature will be more aggressive drivers and less likely to dilly-dally when it comes to driving and parking etc. For us to watch women take around 20 manouvres to parallel park (i’ve seen it, more than once), only adds to frustration to the aggression. Having been held up by womens driving ‘skills’ men in disbelief at what they have seen, can lose concentration on job at hand (remember men can only do 1 thing at a time).By aggressive drivers i do not necessarily mean this in a bad way eg. in countries like switzerland they govern their roads with the 1 second rule. If you have a second to spare you pull out, it is aggressive driving to us but from what i have seen it works very well and gets everyone moving better. And i want to point out that of course there are some good/bad women/men drivers out there. But having spent several years watching customers park outside a restaurant i worked at, i have seen infinitely more bad women drivers than men.
IN defining good driver, i would go with ability. Men definitely have it on women here, isnt it all to do with spatial awareness?. What the insurance companies dont like and rightly so are the young male drivers who are immature w**kers who think its cool to speed and drive like idiots. Not only are they also to blame for mens higher premiums, but when they crash into road barriers and cause a fuel truck to tip as well, causing a 15 minute journey to take 2 hours (luckily no injuries to the public, unluckily no injury to the driver) these guys are terrible drivers. (mile End,London Last night)
By the way, sorry for the rant, but its friday afternoon and i am bored at work and want to go home.
I would have to agree with pasty2003. At the risk of sounding sexist, here are my observations:
Being the more aggressive sex, men tend to take more risks when driving. This is why very serious accidents (wherein someone is often hurt or killed) tend to be caused by men.
Women tend not to pay attention while driving; their minds are often on “other things.” This explains why most fender-benders are caused by women.
Perhaps they have better things to do than drive around in circles?
I’m going to give the nod towards men being slightly better drivers…
I’ve seen pretty much equal numbers of men and women driving while talking on their cell phones, or changing lanes and passing aggresively, or driving while obviously intoxicated, but I’ve yet to see a man driving while applying make up. YMMV.
I agree with The Great Unwashed. Men typically are the drivers so they rack up far more many miles than women on average. When I got a quote between me and my GF, I found that the insurance company covered her for free! There was no increase if I add a women as a second driver! Sheesh.
I guess this question is always going to sound sexest. I only personally know 2 women who I feel comfortable with driving. The other 6 scare me enough that I’ll take my own car thank you very much, and this includes my GF.
Insurance rates don’t tell you who is the better driver, they tell you who the insurance companies think will cost them the least in claims. Insurance companies are not in the business of evaluating driver performance, but in the risks and financial costs of accidents.
Apart from that, you need to define ‘worse’ (and inversely ‘better’.) Remember, the best kind of driver is the one who avoids getting into emergency situations, not the one who reacts fastest to them.
I think the differences among people are far too great to make a generalisation, and driving is something I am very serious about. I have seen people of genders take ridiculous risks while driving. I have seen people of both genders drive with their minds on other things. I have seen people of both genders take 20 minutes to parallel park.
Driving skill can be attributed to how and when you learn to drive, genetics, the kind of car you’re driving, emotional state, hunger and thirst, even what you’re wearing. I have two friends, one female and one male, who are terrible drivers. The male is annoying and slow, the female is fast, risky, and throws caution to the wind. Who can say?
Really? I find just the opposite (since we’re making observations and sweeping generalizations). I find that men are the ones whose minds are on “other things” as you put it. Rarely do I see a woman driver with her wrist draped over the top of the wheel and half her body in the center of the vehicle while the other hand scratches nuts or picks nose. Rarely do I see a pick-up with three women scrunched in the front seat going to a construction site going 45 in a 60 zone. And no, popular as it is to tell the old story about seeing women applying make up (Oh but I’m sure you REALLY did), I’ve never even seen it once. I will say that I see far too many women (and some men) talking on cell phones while driving. Bad idea in my opinion.
By the way, I think women easily put more miles on a car than men do. We shuttle the kids more, run errands more, and live to drive longer. My car is but two years old and already has 52K on it. And I try to always “pay attention” while driving…
I do believe though that you “pay attention” to the road – how else could you drive 26k miles per year and yet have never seen a driver apply their* make-up?
*note shrewd, politically-correct gender neutrality
Thanks, xash. I’m going to do a basic repeat of a post that I tried to do yesterday (or was it the day before?). From what actual research I was able to find–sorry, no cites, you’ll just have to take my word for it–as pasty2003 noted, women tend to be worse at the fender-bender, not-much-damage type of accident. Men, on the other hand, cause the vast majority of very costly accidents, deaths, etc. (I imagine that’s the influence of young men’s rash dare-devilry combined with other men just being way too testosterony.)
INTERESTING NOTE: Of course, there are tall women and short men, but overall, men tend to be taller than women. I, for instance, am about 5’ 5" (about average), and my husband is about 6’ (not too far from average). I had a thought one day while in the car, getting ready to begin driving. I braced my feet against the floorboard and lifted myself up so that my head was about where his normally is when driving. The difference was absolutely astounding! I could actually see the hood of my car, as well as all kinds of things I normally can’t. (FTR, I drive a Toyota Corolla.) I wonder if the average height difference between males and females has anything to do with women having a more difficult time judging distances, etc.
Is it possible that insurance companies may also be taking into account the fact that men’s income’s are (on average) higher than women’s? And men therefore would be willing to pay more for the same commodity?
I’ve always heard it’s a tenet of capitalism that you charge what the market will bear.
I’d think insurance companies (who are after all in business to make money) would be dumb not to take this into account.
It’s hard to see how such a pricing mechanism could be sustained “industry wide” – some individual insurer would “drop-out” from the over-pricing, thus “cornering” the market.
Anyway, surely, it is a tenet that capitalist pricing mechanisms are driven by marginal costs (because that is what the market will bear).