Car insurance Guys vs Girls

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In this country if you speak out against discrimination against women you're placed on a pedestal and worshipped for championing civil rights.
If you speak out against discrimination against men you're labeled a misogynist.

Basically, the EU just dictated to a business that it's not allowed to cover its costs.

This is not in the US though. This is EU regulation trying to social engineer. The discrimination you talk about is bounded in statistical fact. That is how the insurance market works.

Currently the payouts for men are larger, putting premiums up. This could be for a variety of reasons, it doesn't mean one or other gender are worse drivers, it simply mean that it is more expensive, based on current business strategies.

What you could do is pressure Issuance companies to be more discerning, hone in on any other factor besides gender band, and be more innovative to bring cost down for you.

Social Engineering?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_eng ... science%29

Yes. You will note that Europe is full of countries that are more feminist than the US.

No, they just dictated that women will be charged more to cover the increased cost of insuring men.

Not at all. Rather they've dictated that car insurance companies not judge all men and women by the standards of the best or worst drivers of their respective gender. Standard fees across the board for new drivers is the only option that does not discriminate.

I have mixed feelings, on the one hand, men may actually cause more accidents, but rather a more serious accidents (because women often cause bumps)

But on the other hand, if someone said that some ethnic minorities are more often the perpetrators of crime, it would have been called a racist, I think that one should not generalize, everyone is responsible for themselves, should not be profiling people because of race or gender.

Statistically, it means that women will be charged more to cover the statistically higher cost of insuring men. It has absolutely nothing to do with the "best" and "worst" of either gender; it has to do with the averages.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, you are absolutely correct that it eliminates discrimination; on the other hand, some discrimination is good. If I go out to dinner, I want to pay for what I eat (because I'm a vegetarian, and will probably eat a cheap salad); I don't want to split the bill with the guy(s) who ordered a 2 lb. steak, even if there are 10 of us in the party and the cost is spread out.

In any case, it's not the insurance companies who are going to be paying for this.

It only really affects new drivers, as individual no-claims reductions (which are also subject to criticism) amount to a greater saving than the "gender reduction" policies. The basis of the higher cost to initial insurance premiums was based purely on the gender of the driver as there was no prior data or insurance history. In the context of your dining scenario, it would be like asking all the men to pay more because one of them was something of a gourmand. That's not to say I disagree with the essence of said scenario, I fully support the notion of non-bigoted discrimination.

There was also the problem of insurance policies wherein a woman was named as the primary policy holder for a car driven exclusively by a man - sometimes without the consent of the woman. This has led to issues when relationships ended, because sometimes the payments were made using the woman's card, and (obviously) because the policy is fraudulent. This is an indirect complaint, but one that I believe to be valid.

Oh, and it led to this abomination:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz8K6FUk5jM&list=PL489ED416935021E9[/youtube]

And many others like it.

No; it would be like asking men in general to pay more because men are more likely than women to chow down on steaks, and women are more likely to order salads. Individually it would be unfair; statistically it would be fair.


That's a very interesting point. It could, however, apply to any situation in which the driver with the better statistical background is named as the policy holder but the car is driven by someone with a worse statistical background, ie, the policy in one sister's name (with a clean record) but the car driven by her sister (with 10 speeding tickets).


describe, please? I don't generally go to youtube links for evidence.

It's one of many television ads from an insurance company called "Sheila's Wheels". The ads are best described as mildly-offensive, camp, stereotype-filled dross. Features include idiotic "bogans" (Australian rednecks), excessive use of the colour pink and sexualised dolly-girls. The term "Sheila" can itself be considered derogatory, though most Australian men would suggest otherwise. It's often synonymous with weakness - especially (but not exclusively) when used to describe a "bloke".

At the risk of making this something of a non-issue, the percentage of female Sheila's Wheels customers - and by extension the number of claims made - is essentially unchanged, as they're still allowed to market to a specific target audience. This means that their policy holders still pay lower fees due to the collective claims being lower than those of a generic insurer. The same is true of other insurance companies that target women drivers.

Basically, the law barely impacts insurers whilst not actually changing the landscape for individual policy-holders.



AFAIK, men and women cause the same number of accidents, but men tend to make much larger claims due to severity.



Or if insurance companies created subsidiaries who aimed their policies at white drivers because asians or black people caused more accidents. This is why I think it's important to look beyond the statistics in this particular case, and that the no-claims approach at least constitutes an attempt at catering to the individual - albeit a flawed one.

QFT also in the US of A there is no Patriarchy only a Matriarchy disguised as a Patriarchy!

I personally don't really have a problem with men being charged more for car insurance but you have to be consistent, either you can and can't discriminate based on sex and obviously this wouldn't be tolerated if it was the other way around. You can't say men should have to pay more for car insurance and then whine about the alleged pay gap between men and women, there are reasons for both and either you accept it all or none of it.

^ You'd have more of a point if the difference in insurance fees and the causes of the pay gap stemmed from similar sociological sources.