Are Women Safer Drivers Than Men?
On the whole, it’s difficult to say. If you were to ask an insurance company however, they’d probably tell you women were the safer drivers. Now they’re not saying women are all very safe drivers and men all unsafe, but rather that women are generally less likely to make a claim on their policy. For this reason, insurers place women into a lower risk category, therefore charging them less for their insurance.
Let’s say for example you wanted to take out an Audi contract hire (or some other similarly expensive car), if you were a man you could expect to pay more for the same period of time than a women wanting to hire the same vehicle. Because women are seen as less likely to claim on their insurance, they’re generally charged less.
However, are insurance companies and car leasing companies’ correct? Just because a women is less likely to claim on her insurance, does that actually mean she’s less likely to get into an accident? According to the transport department, this isn’t the case. Men drive three times more miles on average than women, yet women are responsible for one third of the accidents on the road. Statisically, that actually means men are less likely to be involved in an accident.
The same study also suggested that women are more likely to have someone run into the back of them, although this doesn’t necessarily say too much about their driving skills, as the same survey found that men are far more likely to run into the back of someone!
So if you’re asking a stastical analysist, they would probably tell you that men are the safest drivers. However, ask the same question to an insurance provider or contract hire company, they would be far more likely to side with women.
