Female drivers are more likely than men to crash into a parked car, a study has found.
But men are more commonly involved in multi-car pile-ups or accidents where someone walking on the pavement is hit.
Diamond Car Insurance, in the UK, studied more than 400 000 accident claims over the last five years to pinpoint the different types of collisions that male and female drivers are involved in.
The findings come after European ‘gender neutral’ rules took effect last month, meaning that insurers can no longer take someone’s sex into account when deciding how much they should pay.
Young women drivers have been among the worst affected by the rule changes, because of the relatively high accident rates among young men.
LOW-IMPACT LADIES
Diamond, which specialises in insurance for women, found that in general women drivers tend to be involved in low-impact collisions.
They are more likely than men to hit parked cars, to collide with a moving vehicle in a car park, to reverse into another car, to hit a wall and to have an accident when driving out of a minor road.
Men are more often caught up in ‘destructive’ crashes at speed. They are more likely to make insurance claims for hitting a pedestrian on the pavement, having a head-on collision, being involved in a multi-car accident, hitting a crash barrier and running down an embankment.
Diamond managing director Dave Halliday said: “Accidents caused by men are on average more costly than those caused by women. This was why in the past women paid lower insurance premiums than men.” -Daily Mail