Insurance Rates and Driving Habits - an AC Experiment

Did you ever wonder why it is that teenagers have to pay so much more, about two three times more than adults for auto insurance? Research on age- related driving habits and accident records has concluded that somewhere around the age of 65, drivers face an increased risk of being involved in an accident!

Car accidents - also called road traffic accidents (RTAs), traffic collisions, auto accidents, road accidents, personal injury collisions, motor vehicle accidents, and crashes - kill an estimated 1.2 million people worldwide each year, and injure about forty times this number . (WHO, 2004)

Wikipedia also says that the term accident is considered an inappropriate word by some, as reliable sources estimate that upwards of 90% are the result of driver negligence. A great deal of research has been done on the factors contributing to negligence and accidents. Articles and statistics can be found on such causes as drowsiness, alcohol, distractions like cell phone usage, road rage, and vehicle type.

All of these variables and poor habits have been shown to directly cause accidents. Most of those factors apply to adults as well as teens. Yet insurance companies don't seem to take those behavior problems into consideration when they figure premiums.

Our insurance carrier gives breaks on your bills for: good grades, not smoking, seat belts in the car, and having more than one car on the policy. These things don't seem to have much to do with the factors that cause accidents.

So why should teenagers pay higher costs then? And of those teenagers, why, like this quote from MSN Autos says, do boys pay so much more than girls?

'Hunter noted a family's auto insurance rate might nearly double when a teenage
girl is added to the policy, but it could triple if a teen boy is added.'

Well, we were asking ourselves just such questions, especially at all the times when we see teenage girls whizzing along, talking on their cell phones, radios blasting and pedestrians leaping for cover as these 'better drivers' nearly run them off the road! And not only have we observed that girls can be pretty reckless, we found research to prove it!