If you’re a young driver and are shopping for car insurance, you’ll pay roughly two to four times what a driver in their fifty pays. Forbes analysis shows that 16-year-olds face the highest premiums, at $9,561 on average per year in the United States — 305% higher than the cost of insuring at 40 years old. As you get older and gain experience on the road, the risk you carry reduces, thus the amount drops accordingly. The average cost for insurance is $7,592 per year by age 17, and $6,779 by the time you turn 18.
The cost then falls to $5,227 by age 19 and to $4,774 once you turn 20. By this point, the reduction in premiums becomes gentler and continues until it reaches $2,842 at age 25. Interestingly, young male drivers are typically more expensive to insure in states where insurers take gender into account (doing so is illegal in California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania). That’s because they have many more accidents than young female drivers. Per Experian, the average policy costs $3,428 for male drivers aged 16-20, compared to $3,207 for females of similar age. And while the gap changes, it’s virtually always more expensive to insure male drivers than female drivers, regardless of age.
For their part, insurance premiums for elderly drivers aged between 70-79 years were much lower by comparison, even if they are more likely to make certain dangerous mistakes that could lead to serious consequences. According to the very same Experian data above, senior male drivers pay $1,888, with females being subjected to $1,782. At 80 or above, male drivers pay an even lower average premium of $1,954, while female drivers pay an average of $1,749. Meanwhile, according to Forbes’ analysis, 70-year-olds currently face average annual premiums of $2,302, with individuals in the 80-plus age group paying $2,823 for their policies.
