If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
surly if they where to find more black people have accidents and charged them more that wouldnt be ok, so how comes its ok to do it by age?
On the other hand, no-one, as far as I know, seriously believes that it is controversial to state that younger drivers are a greater risk. It might be worth anyone who thinks otherwise registering a complaint, though.
It's the only vaguely fair way to do insurance.
As for young male drivers, find any group of 17-25 men talking about cars, the recent things they've been doing and any recent bumps, prangs or write offs. You'll quickly gather why they have high insurance, but with a good company they get well rewarded with no claims by proving the don't fit some of the risk profile.
I think reassessment is an interesting idea, I definitely think that EVERYONE who gets banned should be reassessed when they return to driving. Maybe the form that older drivers get sent to renew their license should have a box for GP to sign saying they are fit to.
But there's a difference between factoring in things such as driving experience, the expense and size of the car, where the car is kept overnight, whether it has any modifications, and factoring in things that a person has no control over, be it age, sex, race, disabilities, and any of the things that we generally accept in every other area of life, are immoral (and often illegal) to discriminate against. Even if you could prove that being a man makes an individual more likely to make a claim (not the same thing as proving that more claims are made by men), then it would still be immoral to base insurance quotes on it, but at least there would be something scientific behind it.
And why would charging black people more (assuming similar statistics existed) create bad publicity, but charging young men more is widely accepted? They are both discrimination, it's just that it seems to be socially (even politically) acceptable to discriminate against and demonise young men, but not a lot of other groups. Well that, and the fact that people are inherently selfish and don't want to see their insurance go up.
Because poor judgement and lack of driving ability is based on age and experience, not ethnicity.
A £3000 quote for a 106 is quite ridiculous, unless it's fairly new and depending on the engine size.
My first car was a 1.1 fiesta, worth about £750 and my insurance was £1100 a year. They quoted me £1700 first off but I told them I'd had a better offer so they lowered it. I then told them I had pass plus and he grumbled and took off the discount for that as well hehe.
6 years on and i'm not in a 1.8 Focus worth quite a bit more and my insurance is £500 a year.
No, it's based on driving experience, and that alone.
But anyway, that's beside the point, it was a hypothetical. If the same data existed for black people as exists for young men, would the insurance companies be justified in charging more based on ethnicity?
Whilst this is true to an extent, the cost to a 21 year old driver isn't the true value cost. It's about economics. Those more willing and able to pay are often charged more, and those less willing and able to pay are often charged less.
Men are charged more because the cost of claims to men is higher, not because they are more likely to have an accident. I can only speculate whether this is because they tend to crash at higher speeds and cause more damage or whether because they tend to drive cars that are more expensive to repair, or a bit of both.
I mean, logically, can anyone come up with a reason why having a willy makes you a more dangerous driver? Driving habits such as aggression and cockiness (stupidity, in essence) aren't down to gender but down to socialisation. Look at the gumball rally where two people were killed recently - shock horror women take part too. And I bet they're every bit as competitive as men.
Saying men are more dangerous drivers is the same, in my opinion, as saying black people are more likely to commit crimes. Statistics support this, but you can show anything with a simple statistic. The fact that people from a poorer background are more likely to commit crime, and that the majority of black people in the country come from working class areas, begins to show that the causes of crime are poverty, not race, and so we should tackle poverty, not race.
With driving it's a similar case, rather than slapping punitive charges on men (because they earn more), they should note that it is poor driving habits / mentality. I don't know how they'd judge whether you're a competitive driver or not though.
But in the 1960s (particularly in America) someone probably said the same, because it was a lot easier for police to target black people as criminals rather than everyone who had a deprived upbringing.
The problem is how to put that down on a application for insurance. Do you have a set of questions asking how crap a driver you are? How many people are going to choose "crap"?
It's simple. You fill in the exact same application form you fill in right now, but without the age or gender bit. Seems easy enough to me.
There's a whole other thread on it down the page a bit.
That only makes it easier from the perspective of the buyer. The insurer still has to know how to deal with the risk. If they currently base part of that calculation on age then they'd have to have a factor to replace it.
Incidentally, I have not seen any reduction with age particularly, only the NCD brings the bill down. That and shopping around.
There is lots of evidence to suggest that young men are more dangerous drivers, because young men have higher sensation seeking tendencies than any other group, including young women. This is found in studies by Reason (1990), Parker (1990) and lots of others. Basically young men score highest on sensation seeking scores, and sensation seeking is definied as the seeking of complex, intense and novel sensations and experiences the willingness to take risks for the sake of such experience. Sensation seeking is strongly linked to the tendency to commit intentional violations while driving, like speeding, close following, pulling out from junctions at risky times, etc. Young men have been found to commit more violations than any other group of drivers, and the tendency to commit violations is a very strong predictor of accident involvement (as explained in the studies I mentioned before as well as others).
As far as I'm aware it isn't just the fact that the accidents involving young men cost more, there statistically are more serious accidents involving young men and a wealth of evidence to suggest that young men are more likely to commit intentional violations and deviations from the highway code. This isn't to say this applies to every young man, but insurance companies have to look at the evidence that is there and this is what the evidence tells us.
Yes it is poor driving habits and mentality, but its poor driving habits and mentality that young men have more than any other group. And this is a result of them being young men. Things should be done to tackle this problem, but the only solution I could see would be to force young male drivers to have more training before they are allowed out on the road or to increase the driving age for men, both of which would be equally as unpopular as insurance companies charging young male drivers more than any other group.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3741581&dopt=Citation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9666240&dopt=Citation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9542543&dopt=Citation
But if you go to http://scholar.google.com and type in young drivers or something like that you get hundreds of studies come up on the subject.
Aggression in men is a well documented adaptive trait. As is sensation seeking (as already pointed out) and risk-taking, most likely adaptive stratagies to encourage men to hunt for food. Your assumption that such differences are purely to do with socialisiation is bollocks to be quite frank. These male traits have been documented in many different societies and much of the evidence points to them being innate. I don't know that much on how it relates to driving but it seems common sense to assume that males apply these traits to different aspects of their life.
I'm always baffled by the "I shouldn't have to pay for other peoples dangerous driving" argument too. That's the very concept behind insurance ffs.
No other business puts itself at financial risk like this either - except financial institutions that is. Banks are less likely to lend moeny to someone without a house, less likely to lend to a 16 year old, or 18 year old and even if they do then the amounts will not be as high as perhaps they would lend to me.
This isn't about discrimination purely on age/gender. It's a detailed analysis of trends and risks. Sadly the evidence all points against young men...
Indeed, but you seem to miss the part where those of greater risk take pay the biggest premium...
Because you can't simply judge risk based on nothing, and it would be an unfair situation to charge every single person the same, regardless. So they either have to base the decision on their existing criteria, or have some other criteria on which to judge.
In addition, when you *do* prove that you aren't the risk they thought you were, you get a reduction in your premium. It's called No Claims Bonus...
How are they judging it on nothing? They're judging it on the other 20-odd questions they ask you other than age and gender.
That's not an argument for allowing them to discriminate. It's not the customers problem they put themselves at financial risk, is it? It's up to them to minimize that risk, sure, but do it by methods that don't involve discrimination. Personally I feel the same about banks. I think an 18 year old with a £30k a year job and a £100k house should be treated the same as a 40 year old with a £30k a year job and a £100k house, but the chances of the first on existing, are quite slim. But banks loans are different, at least. No-one is legally required to get a bank loan, whereas everyone who wants to drive is legally required to get car insurance.
Bad drivers everywhgere bit count yourself lucky - nce you've driven across euroope then you'll realise we ain to bad in thbis ocuntry.,