Wasn’t it Russ Abbott that used to have a show called “Mad House”? Well as we all knew, or at the very least expected, the guys who wrote the scripts for Russ Abbott now seem to be making the rules in Europe.
Frankly, I don’t know why we should be surprised because an illogical decision has been arrived at by a European Court, because that seems to be their speciality and this latest judgement just highlights that the inmates are in charge of the asylum.
In the past, your car insurance cost has been based upon the risk you pose. Many things went into that assessment, including the type of car you drive, the area you live, the age you are, the experience you have and even the job you do. One major component on top of that however was gender, as statistically, female drivers have less accidents and the repair costs of accidents they do have averages out at least half that of accidents involving male drivers.
Insurance is a business and just like a finance company who loans out money, surely it’s up to the company to decide what the risk is and based on that, how much they want to charge.
Whilst we all know there seems to be a passion to make sure everyone gets treated equally, irrespective of race, or gender, clearly this Euro decision is plain stupid.
The upshot is that on average, whilst presently, it costs more for a man to insure a car than it does a woman, that this has to change and the driver’s gender should no longer be a factor in arriving at the price of an insurance premium.
So how’s this going to be handled? Well, its for sure the insurers are not going to drop prices for male drivers to the level charged to a female driver, which means one thing and that’s that insurance is going to go up for female drivers.
Clearly this is another piece of poor unrealistic European legislation and you wonder what planet these decision makers have been living on, after all, have they never seen the “Sheilas Wheels” advert or read some of the in-depth research conducted by them?
In June 2010, SW looked at the effect of summer temperatures on drivers and found that female motorists were calmer, less distracted and safer than men during the summer months and indeed in that period, men make 16.4% more claims than women do. Using a stereotype, it’s also claimed that 29% of men say they get hot under the collar and distracted by women’s summer attire.
So bit of open minded research there, but what ever way you cut it, we probably have to accept the industry statistics and if they are true and if a woman driver does pose less of a risk than a mail driver, why on earth are we falling for another stupid, illogical rule imposed on us by people who clearly don’t understand the industry they are imposing regulations on!
