by Michael Totten

Created on: December 02, 2008   Last Updated: December 07, 2008

All other things being equal, auto insurance premiums for women average 10% less than those for men with similar driving histories. The difference is greatest among new drivers, where a young man without an established driving history can expect to pay as much as four times as much for insurance as a young woman in the same circumstances. The older the driver, the smaller the gender difference in insurance premium.

These differences in costs are based not on individual ability, but on broad sector risk analysis based on statistics such as police accident reports and the statistics available at trafficSTATS. This article deals only with statistic-based differences in insurance premiums, and not with those due to individual driving history.

Based on miles driven, male drivers in the United States are 77% more likely to be killed in a car accident than female drivers. A surprising finding is that 82-year-old women are 60% more likely to die in a car accident than the category with the next highest mortality, young male drivers aged 16-23, whose traffic mortality rate is four times the average. However, this oddity is a function of frailty rather than safety, since the same group of older women is equally more likely to die from any accidental cause. The least likely of all passengers to be killed in a traffic accident is a 4-year-old strapped in a car seat during morning rush hour. Reverse-engineering this statistic, mothers are more likely to be driving their children during morning rush hour than fathers.

Motorcycles are especially hazardous. The average death rate for motorcycle accidents is more than 30 times higher than for car accidents. However, the average fatality risk for male motorcyclists driving between midnight and 4 am is 45,000 times higher than the average, with the highest numbers occurring at around 2 am. On a related note, more men than women are arrested for drunk driving, although this gap is narrowing.

More men than women are driving at any given time. Even after compensating for this factor, far more male drivers are involved in vehicle-pedestrian and vehicle-bicycle accidents. In New York City between 1994 and 1997, 91% of drivers involved in a fatal pedestrian or bicyclist accident were men.

Men are more likely to be ticketed for speeding violations for women, and the speeds tend to be higher. Among those regions which have enacted specific laws against street racing, almost all those cited have been young men. Speed is a major contributing factor to greater injury and death and higher cost of damage.

Road rage statistics are still a new field. On average, as measured both through self-report and by merging and speeding violations, women drive less aggressively than men. Anecdotal reports such as those at My Road Rage identify aggressive male drivers roughly ten times as often as female drivers. Regardless of the underlying cause, any factor which results in a higher number of traffic violations will also increase insurance premiums.

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