My entire life, I had been brought up to believe in the equality of the sexes, and now my main source of education was telling me otherwise, and that all of a sudden women had also surpassed men in that ivory tower of the male ego – driving skills.  The Internet was not available to me at that time, so I have done a little research today to present to you the facts of the situation.

Far from being ‘better’, women drivers statistically have more accidents per kilometre than men.  Whilst it is certainly true that the vast majority of accident claims come from men, there are two very good reasons for this to be expected.

• Firstly, and everything I write about here is statistical, men drive far greater distances than women, so even with a lower accident to kilometre ratio, the immensely greater distances covered by men means that per kilometre, men have less accidents.
• Secondly, and whether this is a sexist statement or not is irrelevant, it is usually the man in the household that takes care of car insurance, so if the lady, or indeed their son of the house, dings the car on the driveway gatepost, it is the policy holder that loses the no claims bonus.

But wait a minute!  Is it possible we are all being duped, and that all the car insurance companies are acutely aware of the discrepancy between their advertising campaigns, and the exhaustive studies that their adjusters have compiled?  Again let us look ant the facts.  For the purposes of this experiment, I invented a 27 year old woman called Abigail, single (but not very attractive) that worked as estate agent and drove a used Ford Escort Gti for £2,000, covering less than 10,000 miles on on clean license she has held for 7 years:

• Churchill is one of the largest insurers in Britain and supplies car insurance to both male and females. Quote: £282.45.
• Swiftcover is another large insurer that is happy to offer its services without discriminating. Quote: £299.46.
• Diamond is a company that caters specifically to the female driver.  Let us see what great deal they can off Abigail.  Quote: £328.85.

Oh my!  That was a turn up for the books.  It would seem that even 15 years after having left a trail of kebab meat from the open refrigerator, that women are still being discriminated against.  The difference being they are being duped into thinking they have the upper hand in the situation when, quite clearly, if they stuck to dinging daddies car they could be saving themselves a not inconsiderable sum of money each year.