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True---

I remember when my wife and I were first married - She had an accident (her fault) and ticket on her recor. I had a clean driving record and was a year older.

Insurance for her was about 40% less than for me.

As far as the article sited in this thread - there is some major false information - Every insurance company I have ever dealt with has taken mileage driven one-way to work into consideration. Report 2 miles, it's a lower rate, report 15 miles, it's higher, report 45 miles, its even higher. I have yet to see an insurance company level rates after 20 or so thousand miles.

This policy is based on the law of averages, not actual reports. People who drive more miles to work every do are not statistically more likely to cause an accident, BUT.... The law of averages says that every minute spent on the road increases your chances of being involved in an accident. Being in an accident doesn't necessarily imply that it is your fault. If I were to spend 2 hours each day on the road, I am spending 1 hour and 55 minutes more in traffic than someone who drives 2 miles to work. That's 1 hour and 55 more minutes to find some idiot who cannot drive.....

A couple things:

The whole "women drive less" angle is bizarre; most insurers already consider gender along with miles-to-work, use of the car (pleasure, farm, commute), age, and marital status in developing rates.

Using miles driven per year does make sense, and it can take into account the suspicions some on this thread have voiced that infrequent drivers aren't as skilled, in the rare instance that those drivers are unsafe but have had no accidents (which would already increase their rates). Still, even given that theory, the additional driving skill from 40k miles a year vs. 5k miles per year is highly unlikely to compensate for 8x the exposure to collisions.

As for the cost of capturing the mileage data, the insured would simply give that information. Of course, they could lie, but if they lied too egregiously that could nullify the policy and their insurer could deny any claims.

In any case, it is unlikely that such a rating factor would be very large, given the application of other criteria like # of accidents, sex, class factor, etc.

It is curious to me how some folks who are otherwise free market supporters turn on insurance companies, and somehow think it's all price-fixing and whatnot. Let me tell ya, folks, it ain't, though sometimes (okay, a lot) state regulators stick their fat noses into things and screw the consumer by refusing to let the market set the price for insurance.