Why Are Women Paying More Than Men to Insure Their Teslas?
Alex Healey
· 3 min read
It is a widely held belief that women pay less for
car insurance
than men. Logic dictates this should be the case, as statistics show them to be safer drivers.However, a study by Jerry looking at insurance rates for
Tesla
drivers, shows that females are paying more than their male counterparts, even if they have no violations on record.Read on to learn more, and if you are looking for cheap car insurance, compare quotes with
Jerry
to find the lowest rate.
What does the Tesla car insurance study show?
The first takeaway is that there aren’t many female Tesla drivers. While 50.6% of licensed drivers in the United States are women, they account for just 16% of Tesla drivers.
On average, Tesla drivers are 4% less likely to have a violation on their driving record than drivers of other cars, but women are doing better than men: 10% of female Tesla drivers have at least one violation, compared to 13.53% of male Tesla drivers.
But flying in the face of conventional wisdom, Jerry's data shows that female drivers are paying more for
Tesla car insurance
than their male counterparts, for every model.For example, if we look at the Model 3 (Tesla’s best-selling vehicle), women pay 15% more for car insurance, even if they have a clean driving record. This equates to hundreds of dollars each year.
There is no obvious reason for this discrepancy, as the average age of male and female Tesla drivers is very similar, at 31.47 years and 30.56 years respectively.
MORE: How Different Kinds of Cars Affect Your Car Insurance Rates
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Why are women paying more for Tesla car insurance?
Unfortunately, this trend is not limited to Tesla.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety data shows that men account for 68% of all car crashes, and 70.5% of driver deaths.
Despite this, once you get above the age of 25, female drivers routinely pay more than men for identical coverage, even when all other significant criteria—age, credit rating, home address, annual mileage—are the same.
This is clearly unfair, but insurance companies are cagey when asked about it. They mumble about algorithms and refuse to explain the factors that contribute to individual premiums.
It is hard to believe that women are paying a higher price for their gender, but some state regulators have said that sexism, and debunked stereotypes about women being poor drivers, is indeed to blame.
As a result, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania have passed laws which forbid insurance companies from using gender in determining insurance rates, and there is some pressure on the rest to follow suit.
Forbes
quotes J. Robert Hunter, the Director of Insurance for The Consumer Federation of America. He says, “The insurance companies’ use of sex as a rating factor does not seem to reveal much in the way of a consistent risk assessment, and regulators should reconsider allowing companies to continue using it at all.”Compare quotes with Jerry to find the lowest rate
The good news is that not all car insurance companies are the same. Many of them ignore gender when calculating premiums, and some will offer lower rates to female drivers.
Make sure you are getting a fair deal by comparing quotes with
Jerry
. We will show you the best available rates from 50+ car insurance companies.The Jerry app is quick and easy to use, and our customers save an average of $879 a year!
