[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Eichhörnchen

Oh I've enjoyed my little thread and I think I made my point. As for seeming angry, well I reserve the right to be angry about people with little regard for safety endangering the lives of myself and my loved ones

But that hardly jibes with "having a bit of fun here".

Originally Posted by FullMetalADCAP

A joke in this case isn't actual discrimination.

Not the joke. The attitude behind it.

A playfully sexist joke? Certainly.

Playful? Maybe. Sexist? Certainly.

Discrimination? No.

You're right. It only constitutes discrimination if some action is taken on it by somebody with power, no matter how little.

And in my life, I've heard the joke used both ways by men and women alike. Women often use the flawed statistics as a means to support their sexist jokes about male drivers.

And in my sixty-nine years I've never once heard women make "men drivers" jokes. Maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd.

Here you admit the discrimination for males under age 25 but excuse it based on a very small minority of males who race. Most males do not race, nor are males the only ones who race in cars. A small minority of females also race in cars. To a lesser extent than males, but they still do it. I've even been in high speed chases with women over the age of 25 who had a total disregard for law or public safety.

Racing was an example, not an entire basis.

It's all about individual driving. A person's sex should be irrelevant when it comes to driving and insurance rates. It should be about individual merit. Those who drive good get rewarded with lower rates. Those who don't, get hit with higher rates. Right now the auto insurance industry is actively discriminating males under 25 based on a very small minority of males who drive recklessly.

Understand one thing. I agree with you completely, and I don't think anyone has the market on bad driving. My only reason for being in this thread is to comment on what I see as a running diatribe that serves no useful purpose. Of course there are a lot of threads here that serve no useful purpose, but this one contains more open hostility than most.

A big problem I noticed when I was a police officer is that a lot of young males were driving without any insurance at all. Of course, the system wanted to punish these men severely for it. But it always made me feel a bit sick to my stomach since many of them were just poor and probably couldn't afford the jacked up rates for males under 25. It's like they are caught in a catch 22 where they are set up to fail. Sure, driving isn't a right in the U.S. and a privilege. And no, they shouldn't have been driving without insurance. But would so many have been driving without insurance if they were given a fair and equal rate as the other half of the human race? Probably not.

If you feel that strongly about it are you working to change it? Are you an activist on that front, or merely venting here? Either way is fine, of course. My own beef, as I've said, isn't with drivers male or female, or against complaining about them, or against feeling discriminated against. My complaint is using the forum as a soapbox for what I actually see as a minor thing. Complain, sure, but for how long?