Insurance Blog

I regularly tell friends there’s always an insurance angle, no matter the event. And so it is with Lindsay Lohan’s latest fall from grace.
As Lohan’s jail time continues to fuel the news headlines, our colleagues at the Insurance Information Network of California (IINC) remind us that we can learn from Lohan’s mistakes, at least from the insurance perspective.
As reported by Insurance Journal, IINC has determined the average insurance premium difference Lohan could pay for auto insurance because of her risky behavior based on her profile, ZIP code, vehicle model and current record of two DUIs and an at-fault car accident.
A single, 24-year-old female who lives in the Beverly Hills ZIP code of 90210 (Lohan lives in a condo in West Hollywood) and drives a 2009 Mercedes SL550 convertible would have access to 100 percent of the insurers offering auto coverage in California, according to IINC.
With a clean driving record, Lohan […]

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Turns out the Fourth of July holiday can be a dangerous one. Before you head out to enjoy the barbecues and fireworks, consider the following.
The Fourth of July is the most dangerous holiday for drivers, according to State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company. The Hartford Courant’s Insurance Capital blog reports that over the past five years an average 6,031 collision claims have been made by State Farm policyholders nationwide on July 4.
By way of comparison, New Year’s Day saw 5,403 collision claims and Memorial Day 5,321 claims over the same five-year period.
Similarly, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that July 4 is one of the days with the highest number of crash fatalities. From 2004 to 2008 there were about 148 crash deaths each July 4, compared with 114 on a typical day.
Check out I.I.I. facts and stats on highway safety for more information.
Have a safe and happy holiday!

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A bit of good and bad news in latest reports on auto theft and staged auto accidents from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). First the good: the NICB says 2009 marked the sixth consecutive year of declining vehicle thefts in the United States.
For 2009, the 10 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) with the highest vehicle theft rates are: Laredo, TX; Modesto, CA; Bakersfield, CA; Stockton, CA; Fresno, CA; Yakima, WA; San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont, CA; Visalia/Porterville, CA; Las Vegas/Paradise, NV; and Albuquerque, NM.
Some 83 percent of the 366 MSAs within the U.S. reported lower thefts than they experienced in 2008 and once the final figures for 2009 are available vehicle theft may drop as much as 19 percent on 2008, according to NICB.
Now for the bad news: staged accidents. The NICB says so-called staged accident questionable claims (QCs) increased 46 percent from 2007 through 2009. The ratio of staged accident QCs to […]

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There’s been a lot of talk about how the property/casualty insurance sector may be affected by landmark healthcare legislation enacted by Congress last month. One of the concerns among p/c insurers is cost shifting. A new study from the Insurance Research Council (IRC) shows that hospitals have been shifting costs to auto insurers for some time because of low reimbursements from public health insurance programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. This raises auto injury claim costs and forces auto insurers to more closely scrutinize and negotiate hospital bills prior to payment.
According to IRC estimates, in 38 tort and add-on states, cost shifting for bodily injury claims in 2007 resulted in $1.2 billion in excess hospital charges. However, the full impact of hospital cost shifting, including that occurring in other insurance coverages and in other states, may be much greater. Over to Elizabeth Sprinkel, senior vice president of the IRC:
The conventional […]

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Safer roads and vehicles appear to be contributing to what has been a steady decline in U.S. highway deaths since they reached a near-term peak in 2005. Preliminary statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimate that 16,626 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the first half of 2009, down 7 percent from 17,871 fatalities in the first half of 2008. The fatality rate (the number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled) also dropped to 1.15 in the first half of 2009, down from 1.23 in the first half of 2008. A New York Times article by Matthew Wald notes that the recession and high gas prices may also have helped a bit. Preliminary data reported by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) shows that the number of vehicle miles traveled in the first half of 2009 declined by about 0.4 percent, or 6.1 billion miles. […]

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The number of vehicles on U.S. roadways has grown by 7 percent over the last five years, but the number of times those vehicles have collided with deer has jumped by 18.3 percent. In its latest study of annual deer claims, State Farm estimates 2.4 million collisions between deer and vehicles occurred in the U.S. during the two-year period between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2009. Among the 35 states where at least 7,000 deer-vehicle collisions occur per year, New Jersey and Nebraska posted the largest increases of 54 percent. Deer-vehicle collisions also jumped by 41 percent in Kansas, by 38 percent in Florida, Mississippi and Arkansas, by 34 percent in Oklahoma and by 33 percent in West Virginia, North Carolina and Texas. For the third year in a row, West Virginia tops the list of those states where a collision with a deer is most likely. State Farm […]

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The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced the schedule for its two-day distracted driving summit scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Panelists will discuss a range of issues including: the extent of driver distraction; research results on the nature of the distracted driver problem; how technology is both contributing to and can prevent the consequences of distraction; proposed legislative and regulatory approaches to address distracted driving; and initiatives to increase public awareness of safety issues. Participants include Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. One of the issues to be discussed is how proposed federal legislation would address cell phone use by bus and truck drivers. According to an article in today’s New York Times by Matt Richtel, the trucking industry says on-board computers that hundreds of thousands of truckers on U.S. roads use for directions and to stay in contact with dispatchers can be […]

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There were 6 percent fewer highway deaths in 2008 than in 1960 despite the fact that last year there were nearly three times as many licensed drivers, four times as many cars and ten times as many miles driven than in 1960, according to I.I.I. president Dr. Robert Hartwig. His comments came in a keynote speech on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Dr Hartwig noted that IIHS has been on the vanguard in highway and automobile safety for half a century. “Without exaggeration, over the past 50 years, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved and millions of injuries avoided—or their severity lessened—in whole or in part because of the fine work of this institution,” Hartwig said. While for most of its first 50 years IIHS got its message out primarily through television and the print media, the institute is […]

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Guidelines on how to meet the auto insurance requirements under President Obama’s Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), also known as the “Cash for Clunkers” program are expected to be available today at www.cars.gov. Administered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the program helps people purchase a new, more fuel efficient vehicle when they trade in a less fuel efficient vehicle. Depending on the difference in fuel economy between the new vehicle and the trade-in vehicle, people will get a credit of between $3,500 and $4,000 to help pay for the new vehicle. An important feature of the program is that the trade-in vehicle must have been registered and continuously insured for the past year. Check out I.I.I. facts and stats on auto insurance.

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