Insurance Blog

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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