Undeniably, teen drivers are the careless brats, easy-going, bring along many noisy and rowdy friends and get easily distracted. On the other hand, the senior drivers are the careful and cautious type, which leads to the assumption that they deserve a low cost insurance – right? Many insurance companies could not answer “yes” or “no” – for a few good reasons.
Insurance companies offering home or life insurance are basing their insurance computations on a more stable and predictable element. For instance, underwriters will likely to use the genetic history, health or lifestyle to determine the lifespan of the policyholder. Likewise, in the case of home insurance, insurers will consider the probability of wildfires, earthquakes or flooding in setting up the rates.
As they say, you cannot compare orange from apples or home from auto insurance. Both are used to cover losses but works entirely different from the other. Auto insurance relies heavily on the ever-changing variables to arrive at a single computation – being mobile these days would mean higher cost. Since you will not be moving your house everyday as you do with your vehicle, fewer risks could ever happen. Aside from that, the state and the mood of the driver could change at any time, which we believe to have a very strong influence to his driving capacity.
The fact that these fully-loaded testosterone-fueled boys and hormonally-confused teenage girls are playing loud music with their iPods, talking or sending text messages to their friends, jabbering with noisy and unruly friends – while trying to drive a car – offer nothing but potential road hazards to other drivers. Likewise, the cautious but grumpy elderly driver who peeps regularly over the dashboard from his four-car sedan car is equally dangerous as well.
Kansas State University found out, that drivers over the age of 65 are in fact, more hazardous when compared to their young counterparts. The elders drove less and therefore less accident, but when they do, these accidents tend to be deadly which normally involves another vehicle in the scene. Recorded accidents involving teen drivers are rather different which normally do not involve other parties. They usually lose control of the car, run off the road or cliff or colliding objects along the road.
If we are to compare the two on a per-mile basis, we could tell that the senior drivers have the higher chances of finding themselves injured during an accident.
Understanding the Implications on Insurance Rates
This brings us to the question: do teens deserve high insurance rates even though they have quick reflexes and better sensory perceptions? They are not necessarily bad – they are just the way they are, or those seniors who are slower on the road, with blurred vision and hearing problems deserving low insurance rates?
Indeed, these basic questions need to be addressed by the auto insurance companies. Accordingly, birth rates are dropping fast and by 2020, more people will become senior drivers. This remains to be seen if the senior drivers will remain enjoying a cheap auto insurance rates because of their driving experiences and the type of vehicles they usually drive.
