Telematics and Gender Discrimination: Some Usage-Based Evidence on Whether Men’s Risk of Accidents Differs from Women’s

Pay-as-you-drive (PAYD), or usage-based automobile insurance (UBI), is a policy agreement tied to vehicle usage. In this paper we analyze the effect of the distance traveled on the risk of accidents among young drivers with a PAYD policy. We use regression models for survival data to estimate how long it takes them to have their first accident at fault during the coverage period. Our empirical application with real data is presented and shows that gender differences are mainly attributable to the intensity of use. Indeed, although gender has a significant effect in explaining the time to the first crash, this effect is no longer significant when the average distance traveled per day is introduced in the model. This suggests that gender differences in the risk of accidents are, to a large extent, attributable to the fact that men drive more often than women. Estimates of the time to the first accident for different driver risk types are presented. We conclude that no gender discrimination is necessary if telematics provides enough information on driving habits.