Yes, men are gullible, but why won’t they ask for directions?
A recent survey shows a very interesting split between men and women when it comes to insurance. The survey, conducted by Insure.com, tested 2,000 adults’ knowledge of insurance without digging into their actual coverage or claims experience. The respondents were asked if 10 statements based on common myths about insurance were true or false. For the most part, men were more gullible than women.
A myth-by-myth review appears below. Spoiler alert: The right answer is always “false.”
Out-of-state speeding tickets can’t follow the driver home. Thirteen percent of all respondents thought this was true, and two-thirds of them were men. The truth is that out-of-state speeding citations can follow the driver home. An auto insurer may penalize a policyholder for one or more moving violations with a premium increase, so two-thirds of the male respondents need to slow down after they cross the Florida border.
Comprehensive auto insurance covers everything and anything. While only one-third of respondents thought this was true, nearly 60 percent of them were men. Comprehensive insurance is not comprehensive; it extends coverage to a short list of events, including damage from storms, collisions with animals, vandalism and theft.
Thieves prefer to steal new cars. Just 29 percent of all respondents thought this was true, but, again, men made up the majority (58 percent). Car thieves, it seems, are not after the cars as much as they are after the parts. Older cars fetch higher prices not for their coolness but for their parts.
If my friend borrows my car and crashes it, my friend’s insurance will cover the damage. One-quarter of respondents agreed, with 52 percent of them men. This is one of those occasions when auto insurance follows the car, not the driver: You and your auto insurer are on the hook, even if your friend was behind the wheel.
If I cause an accident with extensive damage to other vehicles, my auto insurer can cancel my policy immediately. Regular readers of our blog will know that this is not true, but 44 percent of the respondents believed it (with a 50/50 gender split). State laws are pretty strict about when and under what circumstances an insurer can cancel a policy; it’s a fairly short list, and making a claim is not on it.
There are more, and we’ll get into those in our next post.
Source: Insurance Journal, “10 Insurance Myths (Men Are More Likely Than Women to Believe 8 of Them),” Oct. 21, 2014
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