lichess.org
Donate

Rental car companies are ageists.

I am 22 and have rented a car four times. I have to pay double of what someone over the age of 25 pays, yet I have no accidents, no speeding tickets, and over 80,000 miles driven.

I thought the US was against discrimination.

Comments?
Statistics is not on your side, unfortunately. For every good 22-year old driver, there's dozens of bad ones who are likely to give them serious trouble. This is especially important when it comes to rented cars, which are often used by yuppies and other such wild horses on their drunk sprees.
It's an insurance issue that's based on the statistics of car accidents by age group. The proportion of car accidents doesn't plane out until drivers are over the age of 25 in the US.

Unlike an insurance company, a car rental agency doesn't have the time to ask you a million questions about your life to calculate the most appropriate insurance premium. So they look at the most accessible data: age.

So maybe you are a decent driver, have never been in an accident or caught speeding, unfortunately you still fall into an age group where the probability of having an accident is significantly higher than those above 25.

Yes, it's discrimination (which unfortunately is an extremely loaded word). No, these rules aren't going to change just because you want them to. Car rental agencies just don't have the time or care to spend an hour or more inspecting every claim about how good a driver you are.
Insurance companies are allowed to discriminate... against age, race, whether you smoke etc etc. It is not based on fairness it is based on risk.

When it comes to your car rental it is the insurance risk that puts the price up. As much as you might be a naturally gifted driver you haven't the experience and are probably not as prudent as an older more experienced driver and the statistics confirm that you carry more risk.

I just turned 35 and its the first year in my life that my car insurance bill has dropped to less than $1000 a year. It has typically been $2000 in the past. Nothing has magically changed, I am not much better at driving than I was last year but what choice have I got since insurance is a neccessity to be road legal.
All of society is ageist. I got used to it a long time ago and recommend the same. There are a lot of idiots and idiots tend to make new mistakes due to lack of experience. That's life.
It´s perfectlyalright that insurance companies reduce their risks as much as possible but in the name of fairness they also should give correspondingly reductions in payment which is not the case.
Maximizing profit is the slogan these days like in so many other areas of commerce.
On the other side of ageism, since I was 40, glasses no longer improved my vision back to 20/20. (DMV does not recheck my vision, so I still have a license.) As we get older our reflexes deteriorate, yet insurance premiums do not generally rise.
The US Constitution implies that ageism is allowable. Office holders must be of a certain age to be able to hold certain offices. What happens at age 36 that allows a person to be able to handle the office of president?
"yuppies and other such wild horses" lol nice

here in austria most rental car companies won't give you a car unless you've had your license for at least one year. so you get your license, don't get any practice for a full year, and then you can get your car. that's kinda retarded
it is just a statistical thing. the company looks at how much crap happens at certain ages. most accidents happen for people who do not have a lot of mileage and are young. overall the accident rate goes down by a huge lot if you drive more than 4000 miles a year or so. i just saw some numbers about this, which was quite revealing.

in general the accident rate is waaaay higher with people on low mileage a year and also the highest for young people AND old people.

i can just tell you: drive carefully, especially when it is rainy or snowy, icy. do not drive to fast and always (!) look over your shoulder before changing the lane - i would have made a few accidents if I had not looked, when I was sure nobody was besides me.

Interestingly in the country where I am from there is almost have as much females that die in accidents then males. Maybe they are being discriminated by having to pay higher fees than the dudes that always say women drive bad.

This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.