Sex driving

Published on 19/11/2012 00:00

DJ Hollingdale (Letters, 17 
November) confuses equality with fairness on the subject of motor insurance.

Equality would be if an insurance company offered the same rates for life insurance to two people, one who smoked and drank heavily and the other who did not. That would make them equal but it would not be fair.

A girl driver who bumped into street furniture because she is spatially challenged is not 
equally dangerous to a boy racer who crashes at high speed.

The boy racer may complain about paying a high premium of a few thousand pounds but that is minute compared with the cost of a claim from his girlfriend passenger who is so seriously injured in a crash, which he caused, that she will need constant care for the rest of her life. That can easily cost a million pounds.

It was surprising, but gratifying, that in the recent BBC programme, How Safe are British Roads?, so many men acknowledged that women drivers were safer. This is something few men would have admitted to years ago.

It is heartening that men are opening their minds to the possibility of improving their driving. They just have to learn to drive like women.

Stanley McWhirter

Balcarres Street

Edinburgh