Does Being Male or Female Effect Auto Insurance Rates?

Auto insurance companies do not charge everyone the same rates. When you apply for auto insurance, you will fill out an application, and the insurance agents will use this information to set your rates at a high, medium or low level. Whether or not you are very likely to be involved in a collision will determine the rates that you are charged, and one of the criteria that insurance agents use for this purpose is gender. 

Men Are Involved in More Car Collisions

When it comes to accidents, males are on the losing end because men are involved in more collisions than women. On top of that, the accidents that men have are more serious than those that involve women. Thirdly, men don’t wear seat belts as often as their counterparts.

Because men have more serious car accidents, their vehicles are often much more severely damaged than women’s automobiles. Since they tend not to wear seat belts, men’s injuries are also more devastating. Therefore, auto insurance companies, on average, pay more to repair or replace vehicles owned by men, and they also pay higher medical expenses. For these reasons, men are charged higher rates.

Men Receive More Speeding Tickets

After you compare auto insurance rates with a new insurance company, your agent is very likely to retrieve your driving record from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The more points you have on your record due to speeding tickets, for example, the more likely you are to be a dangerous driver. Your agent will assume that it is only a matter of time before you either cause an accident due to unsafe driving or are hit by someone else.

In general, men receive more speeding tickets than women, and insurance agents charge higher rates for men because of this reality.

Men Are More Likely to Drive after Drinking

One definite sign of a dangerous driver is at least one DUI conviction on a driver’s record. Insurance agents see this, and they charge these applicants higher rates if they are not automatically denying coverage. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 2010, men were much more likely to acknowledge the fact that they drove their vehicles on the public roads after having ingested alcohol. Of the four million estimated alcohol-impaired driving incidents of that year, 81 percent were perpetrated by men.

Men Own More High-Performance Vehicles

The type of vehicle one drives plays an integral role in the auto insurance rates that people pay, and gender is often a factor in this area as well. Men are the ones who tend to purchase high-performance vehicles, and historically, these cars cost more to repair or replace than the typical vehicles that women purchase. People also tend to drive faster in high-performance vehicles, and this results in more serious injuries and deaths. Insurance agents are well aware of the greater likelihood that they will need to pay a lot of money in the event that the owner of a high-performance vehicle is in an accident, and they charge higher rates because of it.