Honda Thinks Woman Drivers Need "Extra Help"

Reuters reports Honda has published a driver's guide for women in Japan that includes info on, among other things, how to pump their own gas, how to safely transport the kids, how to park, and advice for aging female drivers. Honda says the pamphlet "erases all your fears about driving." When asked if this meant Honda thinks women are worse drivers than men, the company's PR flack replied "We don't think so. There are some specific cases of women drivers, and we focus on those cases." There are ...
Read More: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/news-blog/honda-thinks-woman-drivers-need-extra-help/

 

I sure hope the translate it into English and distribute it widely in the
US. Might even be a community-minded humanitarian gesture to give it out to
drivers of other brands of cars. Maybe put a stack of them in the waiting
room in gynecologists' offices.....

 

Do they have the similar pamphets for male drivers? Based on insurance
rates, accident data from http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov, and personal
observation in the U.S., male drivers need the most lecturing to,
particularly young male drivers.

 

Problem is, lecturing does absolutely no good in that demographic, and may
even provoke countervailing behavior.

The only thing that might have sufficiently beneficial effect is a
pocketbook attack, best done through insurance rates. Unfortunately,
governments and activists have worked hard to suppress that incentive
through anti-discrimination regulations and laws. Stupid.

 

Horse hockey. Insurance rates (be they auto, life, or
health) can and do discriminate based on gender. It's legal.

Ident is correct that males face higher insurance rates due
to a higher tendency to get in accidents, speed, etc.

 

You obviously don't have any teen agers on your policy or you'd know
that the alleged 'governments and activists' haven't been very effective
in that suppressing that 'inventive'...

Then again, it might be different in Canada...

 

Good old public insurance.

In Manitoba, only the number of merits you have (5 max, you get 1 for every 2
years of accident and ticket free driving) allow for a discount of 25% (you
get the discount as long as you have a merit). Doesn't matter how old you
are.

Well I guess it is impossible to get full merits until you are 26 years old
in this case. The merits do affect your yearly driver's license fee, $60 for
no merits and $45 for 5.

t

 

Sixty dollars a year? For a driver's license? Whoa! Here in Arizona it
costs at most $25.00 (depends on age) and is good until your 65th
birthday. You gotta renew the photo every 12 years, tho, which costs $4.00.

 

Well, kinda sorta. Auto insurance is one of those industries (like
health insurance) that is crushingly regulated and stifled by the
government for entirely political reasons.

Insurance companies in many jurisdictions do in fact end up charging
more for teen drivers, but they usually cannot do it simply by age or
sex, as they used to be able to do (prior to about 1985). Instead they
have to dodge the discrimination thing by charging based on
"experience" (number of years licensed), or on what kind of car you
drive, or on other irrelevant fudge factors.

The upshot is that a 45 year-old female with a Mustang V8 is going to
pay less than a 16 year-old male with the same car, but a /lot/ more
than she otherwise would in a free market. A 45 year-old new driver will
be hit with gigantic rates, even though he poses nowhere near the risk a
16 year-old new driver does.

Yes, but not based on traditional actuarial determination. And that's my
point.

 

Insurers in the U.S. discriminate by age and sex. It is
legal and rational to do so.

 

In some states, yes. In others, no.

 

Of course, the insurance companies aren't rapacious and would never use
the slightest excuse to:

1. double your rates, or
2. drop you altogether

 

Tegger, you're a great guy in many respects, but I do wish you'd leave
the free market palaver to other NGs.

 

In all states, Tegger. It's called running an insurance
business. They need the numbers of people, and the numbers
must reflect the statistics of the population.

 

From:
http://www.iii.org/media/hottopics/insurance/ratereg/

"Rating Factors: Auto Insurance:
"...Rate classifications based on age and gender are prohibited by law
in Hawaii, North Carolina and Massachusetts. Laws that reduce reliance
on gender and ban age consideration have been passed in California.
Michigan and Montana prohibit the use of rate classifications based on
sex and marital status and Pennsylvania prohibits the use of gender."

New Jersey also has some sort of control or prohibition on age-based
discrimination.

Most, if not all, states have regulatory departments, boards or
commissions whose job it is to monitor and approve rates and their
classes. Even in those states where it is theoretically legal to charge
16 year-olds higher rates strictly and solely because they are 16 years-
old (or males strictly and solely becuase they are male), it can be
difficult to get such blatant discrimination past the regulators. There
is considerable political pressure to keep rates down for the highest-
risk groups. This has the corollary effect of driving rates up for less
risky groups.

It has not been possible for several decades for insurance companies to
operate on a purely actuarial model. In some cases states have even
adopted that regulatory abomination known as "no fault", which explodes
the actuarial model to smithereens, making it literally impossible for
insurance companies to effectively manage risk at all.

As it has become harder and harder to manage risk, insurance companies
have become ever quicker to raise rates (or switch customers into a
higher rate class) at the slightest provocation in an attempt to
maintain some profitability within the category of auto insurance. In
some jurisidictions (such the province of Ontario in Canada), insurance
companies on aggregate actually pay out more in claims than they take in
in premiums.

Plus there is permanent upwards pressure on rates as insurance companies
become reluctant to allow rates to fall for any class at any time,
afraid they may not be allowed to raise them again later on. The
ultimate effects of regulation, everywhere and always, is to raise rates
for everyone.

 

Poorly worded.

More accurately, I meant to say:
"...it can be difficult to get /rate increases for those classes/ past the
regulators."

 

Ya gotta remember that Kanadah is influenced by European style socialism
that requires the working and productive population to provide for the
lazy and stupid population.

Somebody has to pay somewhar'...

JT

 

Yeah... In "no fault" states as MA where rates are among the highest in
the country..

JT

 

I stand corrected.

That's editorializing IMO. For example, I would be surprised
if health insurance discrimination by age and gender were
prohibited.

 

I suspect the drive behind this may have been insurance
companies themselves, not some sort of PC movement as Tegger
rants. Their getting to charge people the same rate
regardless of gender and age suggests to me more profits
while messing over females and those who are not young
males.