I heard this statement and it confused me. The explanation was more red cars have accidents than other cars. But surely that doesn’t translate to “I personally am more likely to have an accident if I drive a red car than a blue car today”? Assuming there’s nothing inherently about red cars that makes them more likely to crash. I’m struggling with the maths theory behind it.
Edit to clarify my question: does the statistic that “red cars have more accidents” translate to the statement that “I, personally, all other things being equal, am more likely to have an accident if I drive a red car than a blue one”?
In: 10
In the UK at least, 30-odd years ago I believe red cars were involved in more, or more-severe accidents, and the insurance premiums reflected that.
The effect would be found in the insurance statistics, but I think the hypothetical explanation is that the type of people who tended to choose red cars were a higher risk. i.e. the chosen colour is a marker or proxy for the driver-attitude and hence risk. Obviously it’s only a statistical correlation, and doesn’t imply anything about individual drivers.
More recently, I think the effect is much less significant, and insurance premiums don’t seem to be noticeably different for red cars (go to an insurance quote site and play with the numbers)…
There are also a lot fewer red cars on the road now than there used to be. There’s a lot of boring metallic-blues and metallic-greys! Fashions change.
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