Certain commentators are getting themselves worked up over the latest EU ruling wishing to abolish the use of gender in insurance calculations. http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/11/123&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
The mention of EU no doubt sets alarm bells ringing in the heads of those obsessed that Europe are once again meddling in our affairs and upset that a perfectly respectable lady might see her premium increase at the benefit of some yobbish boy racer. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1354051/Boy-racers-win-gender-insurance-shock.html
   Once again this misses the point that the way insurance companies calculate their premiums is biased by separating on gender grounds and the only major factors should be actual risk as opposed to perceived risk as well as value of item to be insured. The whole point of insurance is to spread the cost of replacing or repairing an item amongst the rest of the population but the companies have tried to second guess the markets and adding more on to the cost according to certain criteria. Currently one of these is gender whereby the price for men is higher as the statistics say that men are involved in more accidents. The trouble with these tactics is that people find it hard to argue with the facts but they do not say that every male driver is dangerous behind the wheel whereas every female is a safe driver. You can split the population into any set or group that you want and one will always come out better than the other in the statistics, but if the groups were split along racial lines then there would quite rightly be an outcry.
   The number of factors that these companies use are so numerous as to make the whole thing ridiculous - the one that I get stung on is mileage: their thinking is that as I spend more than an average amount of time on the road I am more likely to have an accident, whereas I would argue that I have spent more than an average amount of time on the road without having an accident so that makes me a safer driver. Every question that is asked is loaded with even the seemingly innocuous "Do you smoke?" counting against you if you answer yes. Back in the day when I did I questioned this to be told that if I tried to through a lit cigarette out of the car window and missed it could cause an accident as I tried to put out the back seat which was about to turn into an inferno. This indicated to me the level of speculation that they were prepared to go to and it was no surprise to hear of them keen on the idea of fitting monitors to cars to check the quality of roads that you were driving on.
   It is ridiculous to penalise a whole sub section of society by the actions of a few and despite the Daily Mail's protestations there are indeed girl racers as there are perfectly safe teenage boy drivers. The only thing that should count against an insuree is the number of claims made or points on licence which are an indication of that individual's ability. The only other things to consider should be the value of the vehicle and it's security. The problem is that there are so many insurers all trying to find an edge that these other factors are used to try to gain an advantage over each other. One thinks they have a new angle to identify risk and the rest soon follow leaving us all bombarded by lots of promotional post when the renewal is due and another group of people gain pariah status.