There are a lot of factors that influence how much a person will pay on his or her auto insurance premiums. It turns out that in some states, like California, one of the factors that insurance companies consider is whether the driver is male, or female. One gender has a definite advantage over the other when it comes to finding cheap auto insurance prices.
The website called OnlineAutoInsurance.com did an analysis recently where they compared prices on the same kind of 12 month California auto insurance policy. They looked at different insurance companies that sold auto insurance. They learned the price of premiums that would be offered to people who are in different age brackets. Next, they focused on the how the price of car insurance premiums varied based on the sex of the driver.
In order to give things as little variation as possible, they ran the numbers for the same kind of auto insurance policy, for the same type of vehicle. They checked out the price offered to men and to women from nine different age brackets. This meant that they were asking for details about a 15/30/10 liability policy with comprehensive and collision coverage. They attached this car insurance policy to a 2009 Toyota Corolla LE. They also made certain that the drivers that the policy was calculated for had good driving records, that were free from accidents and traffic violations.
The results were interesting. On average, men spend between $66 and $1,480 more on car insurance premiums than women do. When viewed across all age brackets, men were spending, on average, around $630 more than women were. The biggest difference between the price of auto insurance for men and for women was in the age bracket that included 18 year olds. Premiums for men who were 18 were 30% higher than for women who were 18. The smallest difference between the price of auto insurance for men, and the price for women, was in the 35 year old age bracket. The difference for this bracket was just 3.7%.
The reasoning behind this difference in price is that insurance companies feel that men are a higher risk to cover than are women. Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation from 2008 shows that men were 37% more likely to be involved in an auto accident then were women. The same data indicated that men were way more likely to be involved in fatal crashes then were women. The more risk that an insurance company sees you as, the more money you will be charged for your premiums.
Image by Irina Slutsky on Flickr