This may be contentious, but here goes...
I think this (equal premiums for each sex) is the right thing to do. If you look at detailed insurance statistics, there isn't actually any significant difference between the insurance risk (and hence premium) of male vs female drivers - for drivers in the same car, doing the same journeys. Any difference in risk in individuals will be catered for by NCB etc, which is fairer.
The reason women have been a lower insurance risk is that historically (ie going back several decades), they have done different types of journeys, in different types of vehicles, due to the traditional role of men going to work and women staying at home to raise families. For example: shorter journeys, with children in the car, with few time pressures (eg not trying to battle through commuter traffic to get to work on time). These different journeys/vehicles obviously have different likelihood of accidents etc, regardless of the sex of the driver. It just so happened that women were doing the lower-risk journeys, creating the misperception that women are inherently lower-risk drivers.
However, in recent decades as the roles of men/women have become more similar (which is all good of course), the two sexes now tend to do more similar journeys: men taking children to school, women commuting to executive jobs and so on. Also as the pay gap reduces (along with other social changes) women tend to drive more expensive/powerful cars than they used to in the past (no more "just a small hatchback for the lady indoors").
All these factors have closed the gap between the insurance risk of men and women. That's why these days annual mileage, type of journey and so on are far greater factors in setting insurance premiums. But because of the perpetuating stereotype, there is still the perception that women are a lower risk per se and should get a lower premium, so insurance companies have to skew their prices this way to win business. The facts are (at least from the insurance figures I've seen in detail), these days a man or woman doing an identical journey for an identical purpose in an identical car, have the same insurance risk.
So redressing the disparity in premiums is probably something the insurance companies are dying to do; this piece of Euro legislation just lets them do what they wanted to anyway, while pointing the finger for any public outcry about it at someone else. Oh, and it will probably give them an excuse to increase premiums across the board at the same time to boost their profits
Of course one can produce endless examples of reckless teenage male drivers vs careful vicars-wife drivers - but the trouble is it's always the reports that reinforce the stereotype that get the headlines. The endless examples of reckless teenage female drivers get dismissed as 'isolated cases' because they don't match preconceived notions. Hence why one needs to look at large-scale insurance statistics to see the true picture. I no longer have access to the figures I mentioned above or I'd post them here, but I would be interesed in any up-to-date numbers anyone has to confirm or refute any of the above points (truly objective numbers, comparing identical journeys in identical cars for a large sample of people).
Scott
).
Liverpool