Report: Why men in the US still pay more for auto insurance [w/poll]

Filed under: Car Buying, Safety

It's not just your imagination - insurance premiums in the United States are still higher for men than they are for women. According to a recent study of 5,000 quotes conducted by Onlineautoinsurance.com (OAI), auto insurance quotes for men are still about 23 percent pricier than women's on average. Plus, if a man and a woman with the identical driver profiles (same driving record, age and vehicle) received quotes for the same coverage, the man's quote would be more expensive 62 percent of the time.

As expected, it was young men (under 25) who paid the brunt of the cost, with an average premium of $676 more than their young female counterparts when the quotes differed - keep in mind that men and women were offered the identical premiums 27 percent of the time and women were quoted higher in 11 percent of the cases.

While figuring out why men often pay more still isn't completely clear, experts cite statistics showing that men and women drive differently. Not only do men spend more time behind the wheel (they drive about 1.5 times as many miles), but they are more likely to violate laws for speeding, yielding and passing. Plus, they take more risks (males were involved in 1.25 million more crashes in 2010).

Interestingly enough, courts in the European Union have decided that "differences in insurance pricing based purely on a person's sex are discriminatory;" a new Gender Directive is officially in effect and it will change premiums for policyholders. The US is unlikely to follow its lead, as insurance companies in the States are typically allowed to use rating factors (those that correlate with actual risk), despite the obvious controversy.

Considering the statistics, do you think men should pay more for car insurance than women? Take part in our informal poll below.

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Why men in the US still pay more for auto insurance [w/poll] originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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