It's a lengthy argument that's been waged ever since women gained the right to drive: do men or women drive the worst? The stereotype has been, for years, that women are terrible drivers due to their refusal to be aggressive on the road, while men are criticized for putting themselves and others at risk. The only common agreement has been that people from Massachusetts drive terribly, regardless of gender.
This age-old debate has seen new fire thanks to legal changes in the European Union banning gender-based insurance rules. What normally wouldn't have been noticed by anybody other than lawyers now has everyone up in arms, as it's been revealed female drivers will see a 25% increase, while men will see a 10% drop in auto insurance rates. In other words, European men have been paying 35% more than women for years, because the car insurance industry believes women are better drivers.
Turns out, the insurance industry isn't actually wrong. In study after study, it's shown that men are in more crashes, and have more traffic violations that lead to accidents. In fact, studies have shown a fairly consistent number: men are 77% more likely to get in a fatal accident. But don't take our word for it: Carnegie Mellon has the statistics available in a handy database you can see for yourself.
On the other hand, it is worth asking how fair this is to individual drivers. After all, a big part of those fatalities are young male drivers, who are more aggressive on the road but don't have the driving experience to back it up, and thus get into more accidents in general. And it's not like there aren't women who drive aggressively. In fact, there's one group more death-prone on the road than teenage boys: women in their eighties, who are simply so fragile that even normally non-fatal car accidents will kill them.
Nor are women all timid little lambs on the road: female fatalities on the road have been rising even as male fatalities have been declining. In addition, women are beginning to drive more aggressively, with the accompanying rise of tickets.
There's also the factor of data. All this is based on government-provided data, but there are other factors at work as well. For example, the old joke is absolutely true: young women, especially attractive young women, get fewer tickets and are more likely to beat those tickets in court, even if they're guilty! But even an older woman is still going to catch more breaks and be cited less. In Massachusetts, widely acclaimed for its terrible driving and even more terrible roads, that adds up to $25 million men are paying that women aren't. A year.
So, the truth is, the jury is still out. The data would seem to say that men don't drive as well as women, but the data is skewed, and indicating that even with that skew, women are closing the gap. The debate rages on: all we know is that somebody is getting a free ride.
Subscribe