I was listening to Moneybox on Radio 4 today and my ears pricked up when they examined the effect of the new gender equality directive on the car insurance industry. I remember reading about this a year or two ago, the EU would be imposing gender equality in driving insurance premiums, after all we can’t distinguish any differences between male and female when it comes to driving vehicles. I knew then I had discerned some profoundly dodgy logic, another one of those salami slices they keep going on about!
Now call me simple or whatever, I’m no expert on the insurance industry, certainly no actuary, but I thought that the insurance industry was based on risk. So the higher the risk, the higher the premium. If I live in the equivalent of a Mogadishu suburb I would expect to pay a higher premium on my car insurance than if I lived in Hart in Hampshire, which if you didn’t know is just about the most salubrious place you could inhabit here in the UK, you know highest life expectancy, great health , etc. The chances of having your car stolen in such an idyll are pretty slim compared with Mogadishu, so the premium is accordingly lower. Likewise, a young man who has just passed his test behind the wheel of his second hand car poses a significantly greater risk to other road users than the equivalent young lady, given the nature of young men, naturally more risk taking, prone to drive faster (I am speaking generally here) and with not quite so much care as a young lady. So logic tells you that young men should take a greater burden.
Thus the well established British insurance industry would charge higher insurance premiums as a matter of course to young men as opposed to young women, to cover the costs of the greater numbers of accidents and injuries caused by young men. Seems entirely reasonable to me, basing the insurance industry on risk.
However, along comes the European Union and imposes on the UK its own interpretation of insurance rules, based on the premise that men and women must be treated exactly the same despite the differences in risk posed by both sexes. No doubt chaps will be rejoicing that their insurance premiums now won’t be so high, whereas ladies might feel a little aggrieved that they are paying disproportionately to cover risk. But we mustn’t let common sense get in the way of ideology, surely those EU officials have a better idea of how the world works than any Tom, Dick or Harry over here.
It might be quite interesting to look at what the the EU website has to say about these matters. Here is a quote directly from the road safety section of the Europa website:
‘Young novice drivers are heavily over-represented in single vehicle crashes (crashes that do not involve other vehicles) and loss of control crashes. Although young novice drivers are over-represented in crashes at all times of day, weekend evenings and nights present higher risks per kilometre driven, especially for male drivers.
For males, speeding is an important accident cause. This, in combination with the fact that young drivers often carry more passengers in their cars, also results in more severe injuries and a higher number of people injured.’
Under the section on risk it states that young drivers have a higher fatality rate per head of the population than any other age group. No surprises there. As far as gender is concerned, the website goes on to say that in the 18-24 age group, ‘the male young driver’s risk is considerably higher than that of the female young driver.’ No surprise there either. Even if it is the case that male drivers drive a higher mileage which would imply more accidents, making allowances for this still makes no difference to the overall pattern. So there we have it from the horses mouth.
You see the ideologues behind the EU don’t deal in reality, They deal in the world they would like to exist rather than what is obviously in front of their nose. Everything must bow to the shibboleth of equality and non-discrimination. Thus the revolution continues, little by little as we sit there like sheep until we have find ourselves sheared and sent to the abattoir without so much as a murmur. When the Soviet Union broke up, the same driver of totalitarianism thought it would have a go at reintroducing the same in Western Europe using nice language like equality and non-discrimination. So those who believe in state control, you can call them communists, socialists, the hard left, there are various words that could be used to describe them, went about their project with renewed zeal. In their world, ideology always trumps reality. Of course, if we want equality in all its forms, perhaps a lot more people want it than we think, then who am I do stop it? Just a thought.
The question is how long will it take before the tentacles of the EU really, really get up peoples’ noses? Perhaps Rumanians and ‘Uncle Bulgaria’ will help the British people to escape the befuddling fog that afflicts them at present.