Are Women Becoming the New 'Road Warriors?'

As female college students head out on the highway for spring break, California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is red-flagging them with a sobering statistic.

California drivers aged 21 to 24 involved in alcohol-related crashes, where someone is killed or hurt, have risen more than 50 percent in recent years. And for women in this group, the rate has more than doubled, he says, up 116 percent.

"There's been a change in women's driving behavior nationally too," says Loretta Worters of the Insurance Information Institute (III), citing Department of Transportation statistics on crashes. In an interview with BNET Financial she noted that "Not only do we see an increase in alcohol-related accidents, but women drivers also seem to be getting more aggressive."

According to Worters, this may reflect changes in society. "Just as we have seen an increased number of women in the workforce since the 1960s, more women have also gotten behind the wheel and taken out their daily stress on the other drivers on the road." In 1963, about 43 percent of drivers, or 40 million motorists, were women. Today, more than 88 million women are licensed drivers, almost half of all motorists in the U.S.

These changes are also reflected in the premiums women pay for insurance. The cost of auto insurance has slowly increased for women, gradually erasing a disparity that once existed between the genders, according to III. Thirty years ago, young female drivers paid about 46 percent above the base adult rate for auto insurance, while young male drivers paid on average 187 percent above the base rate.

Today, while inexperienced young males continue to pay about 185 percent above the base rate, similar groups of women now pay on average about 120 percent above the base rate.

Men can take some pride in a study by John Hopkins School of Public Health. Women are more likely to have accidents than men. Women were involved in 5.7 crashes per million miles driven, while male drivers had 5.1crashes over the same distance.

But what hurts men's insurance premiums is that their accidents are often fatal, according to university studies. Research by Carnegie Mellon University found that male drivers have a 77 per cent higher risk of dying in a car accident than women. These stats were affirmed by Johns Hopkins, which found that men are three times more likely to die in a car crash.

Male or female, it's also expensive to get caught driving under the influence. California's Commissioner Poizner says the average first-time cost of a DUI (Driving While Intoxicated) is a whopping $13,500. For most college students, that's a very expensive lesson.