High Risk Drivers: Males vs Females
Driving is probably the easiest thing to do in the world. Now all together, “Yeah right”. It is a highly skilled endeavor that takes years of practice to master. Navigating on busy highways at high speeds or making left turns when theres a huge truck in front of you are not easy tasks.
I have personally have been driving for over 10 years now and have yet to get into an accident or receive any kind of ticket (thanks god, knocks on wood). I would consider myself a fairly safe driver and I pretty much owe it all to staying calm while at the wheel. In fact, studies of shown that drivers that are too nervous or too aggressive behind the wheel pose a high risk to themselves and those around them.
Nervousness causes one to be overly cautious and as result drivers around them are less likely to understand what they are going to do on the road. It also releases a hormone into the brain which inhibits fear and we all know how rationale we think when we are scared. Take for example a nervous driver on the highway, say someone going 40mph. You know the type, their sweating, holding both hands on the wheel in a fixed position, looking dead straight, as if they are suffering from tunnel vision. They usually don’t get into accidents on the highway, because everyone just passes them, where they do get into trouble is in the parking lots. These nervous nellies are likely responsible for the majority of fender benders, because their fear that they will hit the car beside them while getting out of the parking spot, becomes a reality. In their mind they are praying they don’t hit the car, so their mind is “don’t hit the car, don’t hit the car, don’t hit the car”, but what happens, they hit the car. Why? Because they should have been concentrating on driving and not on avoiding cars -this is not driving.
Now let’s take the aggressive driver, the one who excessively tail gates, drives 50 mph over the speed limit, makes sudden lane changes, weaves in and out of traffic like he’s playing Top Gear. Notice I said “he”. Most aggressive drivers tend to be male, while most nervous drivers tend to be female. Who do you think is responsible for the worst accidents? Males. Why? Because males take greater risks and couple that with an aggressive driving attitude and you have a recipe for some highway carnage. Now what does all this have to with what insurance companies charge you?
Insurance companies are like the Google of the roads. They have people called actuaries, that crunch numbers all day, related to the number of accidents/cost of that accident to the kind of driver involved in that accident. In their “research” they have found that while females are involved in more accidents, males are involved in more costly accidents, which cost the insurance companies more money.
Not only that, but they break it down further. They have different categories and have therefore found that males under the age of 25 pose the greatest financial risk while driving. Thus, they figure this pattern will continue and in order to provide insurance to a young male they are going to charge more to cover the risk this person poses.
If your unfamiliar with any of these terms, please take a look at our glossary, which is constantly updated.
If you are your looking on getting an auto insurance quote, go here if you are a high risk driver looking for insurance.
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