http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12606610
I can see the need to enforce equality in many areas of life, but this one baffles me!!
How can the EU courts impose this ruling which clearly goes against all the data insurance companies hold in relation to which gender poses the greatest risk.
All insurance is based on the perceived risk of a claim, if a young female driver is less of a risk than a young male driver then she should pay less.
The only winners from this are the insurance companies!
and the lawyers. As usual.
WEirdly I heard an insurance company saying it was a bad idea too earlier today. It is actually one of the barmiest ideas the EU have come upon. Insurance is judged on risk, so if I live in a high risk area are my human rights being violated because I pay more insurance than someone who lives in a low risk area?
I think I am going to have to check out Sheila's wheels, my other half seems to get low insurance from them and I could cope with the pink letters coming through in my name.
I was just starting my own rambling thread on this - see above/below
Its a barmy idea indeed...
but we've had similar debate in here recently to do with employing females in the office etc. and the "anti-mysoginists" got all hooopy about that too.
But, Im sure if you do enough analysis you will also find risk characteristics that are quantifiable relating to sexuality, racial origin, public schooling, singlespeeding etc. Would forum-goers be happy to be priced on such characteristics too?
Fair point Stoner! - After all, if an insurance company showed that black drivers caused more accidents, you can imagine the reaction if they upped the premiums...
I was thinking more along the lines of romanian lorry drivers, but the point stands 
It seems unfairly applied to young people too. And white van drivers, and those with a record of crashing yearly, Subaru Impreza drivers.
The whole compulsory insurance thing is nonsense full stop, don't try to say one aspect is fair and the other isn't, none of it is fair using any reasonable definition.
Make it optional and see premiums plummet.
Yes, it's a dumb idea. Is age 'discrimination' protected by the Eurocrats to? If so in future then I assume driving experience could still be a criteria but someone's age couldn't?
Make it optional.
You're insane.
a serious point about shelias wheels, part of esure
( so if ditzy blonds or michael winner get your goat.... )
the premiums are cheap, because they realise people who post sexist comments are too stupid to read the forum rules and dont realise they are vastly underinsured.
men are allowed to be insured with them, but they put most men off with the advert and the pink paperwork - so to date, very few people have actually read their policys.
Car insurance should be optional. If you choose to drive a big expensive car then get it insured for all incidents yourself. I drive a banger - why should my insurance premiums reflect the guy with a teeny weeny who insists in driving around in a big flashy Mercedes that costs a fortune to repair ?
If I had my way I would insure for fire, theft and third party, then drive even more carefully.
The current system is a huge state mandated gouge.
Young males crash cars more often than any other group of drivers they are a greater risk ergo they should pay more. It semes reasonable to base insurnace premiums on the level of risk even if this is viewed as unpalatable. Clearly the chances of having a crash are not equal between gender or ages or I assume car type etc. I do not know if place of birth/ethnic origin has any bearing in it do you Stoner?
FFS Will no one say it is PC gone mad
Car insurance should be optional
how on earth will that improve things?
If car insurance was optional people would drive more carefully as they would have to pay any repair bills rather than relying on their insurers to do so. People would still be liable for damages....
Or ban fully comp insurance, if you stick it in a hedge/tree/lampost, thats your fault.
Isn't car insurance optional in NZ?
I agree with them introducing the equality. Perhaps now we might pay equal, and when the premiums still continue to rocket - for both sexes - then the voice of twice as many people will be heard.
I also agree with the no 'Fully Comp' insurance - the roads would be MUCH safer, if Joe Bloggs blasted around in his nice new RS6... and binned it, he would be £LOTS out of pocket.
Also, see if it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender, then surely it is also illegal to directly discriminate on the basis of age. Basically - all of our insurance premiums are going up.
Car insurance should be optional
The mandatory car insurance is third party insurance. It's not insuring you, it's insuring the rest of the world against your actions when you get behind the wheel of a half ton steel missile.
Where would you stand if insurance was optional and you killed someone? Reckon you could afford to pay out the compensation to their parents / widows?
surely it is also illegal to directly discriminate on the basis of age
People will all be a given age at some point. If you offer a 20% discout for the over-30s, at some point everyone will qualify. That's not discrimination, it's price-banding.
Compare with discounts based on sex or race; I'm unlikely to find myself as an afro-american woman later in life without some extensive surgery.
If car insurance was optional people would drive more carefully as they would have to pay any repair bills rather than relying on their insurers to do so. People would still be liable for damages....
Yes, that clearly must be true, because if you get crashed into by people who don't bother with insurance now, they are liable, and of course they always pay up quickly in full, without any long winded court battles, false names, or plain just not having the money to pay. Oh and of course everyone who decided not to pay for insurance would easily be able to pay the bills when they wrote off your 40,000 pound Mercedes or whatever?
If I had my way I would insure for fire, theft and third party, then drive even more carefully.
You do realise it is only third party that is compulsory don't you? So if you want, you can do exactly what you say.
I do not know if place of birth/ethnic origin has any bearing in it do you Stoner?
No idea, but I bet if the data was collected there would be some uncomfortable, "statistically significant"*, findings. I believe the insurance industry has a kind of self-policing, dont ask dont tell kind of approach to the more unpalatable side of risk profiling. The gender differental was one of the key ones that has in recent history fallen outside of that policy and been widely held as a "morally" acceptable distinction. Now the ECJ has applied a new set of morals on all our behalves. Arent we lucky! 
* that's not the same as being "significant" in the vernacular sense BTW.
One could probably graph it with a non-zero-axis graph but some of the hard-of-thinking in here might have some difficulty with the concept...
if you get crashed into by people who don't bother with insurance now
The Motor Insurance Bureau have a pool of funds for compensating victims of uninsured drivers. What this means is, for every uninsured driver, the rest of us have to pay more on our premiums to cover their bloody negligence.
as well as seizing the cars of un-insured drivers, they should be able to sieze any other assets as neccesasry to be liquidated and the value of the premium they should have paid should be put into the MIB fund.
IMO
I heard a ridiculous conversation about this on radio 4 at the weekend. It was to do with how claim management companies and the use of replacement cars (through contract hire firms owned by the claim management companies) are now taking up the vast majority of claims, rather than the actual cost of repairs.
The excellent example they used was a premiership footballer who was at no fault in an incident involving his £72k s-class merc. His merc was off the road for about 3 months being repaired, during which time he hired an aston martin (value £105k) as a replacement car. he was then reimbursed for the £600 per day rental cost (a total of over £60k for the period maths fans) while the approx £8k in repairs were done to his merc. The insurance company rejected this claim and ending up settling for 2/3s of these costs. The fact his merc was off the road for 3 months being repaired is ridiculous enough, but then to claim for a car that is of higher value that the one damaged is outrageous. they went on to say that there are now so many companies involved in inflating insurance claims that the industry is going to have to do something about it.
transcript here
I also agree with the no 'Fully Comp' insurance - the roads would be MUCH safer, if Joe Bloggs blasted around in his nice new RS6... and binned it, he would be £LOTS out of pocket.
Certainly worked for me - I binned my shiny blue Ford Capri 2.0S at the tender age of 21 thanks to my own inexperience and resulting inability to judge the road conditions. It was insured 3rd party and I spent the next two years paying it off and driving around in a succession of bangers including, shamefully, a Morris Marina. Strangely enough, by the time I was in a position to buy another pretty car, I was a much better, safer driver and have managed to avoid any further self-inflicted accidents since. Sadly, I still haven't worked out how to avoid being rear-ended in stationary traffic, despite being on the receiving end twice (both lady drivers ironically!).
However, this reminiscence also served to remind me that it's not simply about frequency of accidents per km travelled. I recall reading somewhere that women's accidents tend to be much less costly than men's - perhaps confirming the stereotype of low speed bumps thanks to 'multi-tasking' in slow moving traffic etc, rather than young guys who have accidents at higher speed and are therefore more costly for the insurance company.
as well as seizing the cars of un-insured drivers, they should be able to sieze any other assets
No arguments here.
There was a spate of kids on motorbikes round here a little while ago. Usually riding off-road bikes or those stupid little monkey-bike things, no helmet, no numberplate, and so one can only assume no insurance or MOT and probably not even a driving licence.
It baffles me how they get away with it. As a minimum, the bikes need to be impounded and crushed for such flagrant contempt for motoring law, surely? I just don't understand how they dare do it, if it were me I'm sure I'd be arrested after riding about ten feet.
I once got caught driving without insurance due to a 20 minute gap between two concurrent policies when I'd just bought a car (and annoyingly I'd tried to change it earlier and the insurance company wouldn't let me). Complete oversight on my part, and it cost me six points and a ninty quid fine back in the early 90's.
You really think that the kind of person who drives a cheap tatty car with no insurance has got assetts to cover your loss? You dont think it will be done by someone so poor that they cannot afford insurance? You will just have to pay more to add cover for uninsured losses. Even when it is compulsory it is costs £1.25 Billion* to cover for unisured losses - you really think that will not grow if it is not compulsory?- and 1 in 20 has no insurance according to AA
I cannot see why the lack of compulsion will improve these figires ort lead to an outbreak of safer driving
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11117960
You really think that the kind of person who drives a cheap tatty car with no insurance has got assetts to cover your loss?
Are they using both of those kidneys?
I have tried to get third party only insurance, they just laugh at you on the phone, or quote it for the exact same price. Maybe I will try again.
The footballer story sums it all up. If we all drove round in reasonably priced small cars rather than status symbols or ridiculous over powered gas guzzlers then insurance would be cheaper.
If you drive a car that costs more than £10k then you should bear any extra costs of insurance, for us all to have to pay is just as insane as charging young males more.
Or perhaps insurance should be free if you drive a 1.4 litre skoda ?? Nobody actually NEEDS to be able to drive at 90mph, with heated seats and a sat nav etc.
Are they using both of those kidneys?
Nobody actually NEEDS to be able to drive at 90mph, with heated seats and a sat nav etc.
And I thought Stalinism was dead.
Aren't we a bit off track to the original argument?
On one hand it could make for a bloated and inefficient insurance system. How can you insure against a risk if you can’t evaluate a risk? What will happen is that everyone will pay a little more and some women will pay a lot more to compensate for the lack of adequate risk evaluation
Don’t forget this goes both ways gender wise. Women currently pay more than men for annuity based life policies because statistically they live longer and therefore cost more to finance.
On the other hand, this ruling could force the insurance companies to become even more efficient so that rather than using broad based criteria, such as gender, to evaluate risk, you take a more personalised approach.
The next stop will be to use DNA profiling to evaluate your own, individual level of risk for everything from motor accidents through to life expectancy.
Heck, why stop there, why not have a system of eugenics that just evolves risk out of the system all together.
My point is that there are far worse things than having to pay more for car insurance because you’re a young man or more for a life policy because you’re a woman. Let them discriminate. It’s better than the alternative.
Women currently pay more than men for annuity based life policies because statistically they live longer and therefore cost more to finance.I thought women paid more for life insurance, they tend to live longer so more chance of them being a net contributor to the company...or is that "annuity based" bit important? (I googled it briefly but came away none the wiser)
My point is that there are far worse things than having to pay more for car insurance because you’re a young man
Yeah - balls on the outside and no multiple orgasms for a start.
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