Have you heard about the new Ford F-150? It would be hard to miss the press on its predominate aluminum body. Ford shaved 700 pounds off last year’s model by switching from steel to aluminum for 97% of the outside of the truck’s body. Doing so helped improve theF-150’s fuel economy from 5% to 29% depending on which engine is installed.
In case you missed it, House Bill 2305 was passed by the Texas Legislation on June 14, 2013. It goes into effect on March 1, 2015 and it does away with the familiar inspection sticker most Texas drivers are accustomed to receiving when we have our cars and trucks inspected each year. The goal, starting March 1st is to combine inspection sticker with our vehicle registration sticker.
This sparked my thinking about what advice I’d give on the insurance side of personal finances to help you confirm you’re adequately covered and hopefully pay less than you did this year! So get out your policies, flip to the declaration pages, and let’s see what we can do in 30 minutes or less!
There are two blog posts I’ve written in the past several months on car related topics. One involved the airbag recall fracas between the auto makers, the air bag manufacturer, Takata, and Congress (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/air-bags-recalls-mysteries-driving-changes/). The other involved our privacy rights from the auto makers (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/privacy-rights-and-your-car/). I felt it was time to revisit and update these posts due to the movement in both of these stories.
Sheri and I were returning to Dallas after visiting family in Birmingham for Thanksgiving. A friend and client called me on my cell phone. Since it was Saturday, that usually means a couple of things such as they need help with a claim or a copy of their ID card because they’re getting their car inspected. In this case, it was neither, she was in the process of buying a new car, and before driving off the lot with her new car, the finance manager wanted to confirm she has a current and active car insurance policy.
Is privacy dead? Most of us know that if we write a blog, tweet, share on Facebook, pin something on Pinterest, or share a video on YouTube, it’s probably not private. The same goes for email and those cookies which seem to track every website we visit. But did you know your car may have the ability to share more about you than you’d like?
There’s one more area teens have that parents need to address; what to do in alcohol related situations. For example, 25% of all teens don’t know what to do if someone was drinking alcohol in the vehicle. 28% don’t know how to get home if their driver has been drinking. In 2011, 32% of teen drivers killed in car accidents had a blood alcohol content of 0.01 or higher.
Last week I introduced 5 driving scenarios to expose your teen driver to including left turns, dead traffic signal, rail road crossings, highway driving, and rush hour driving (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/exposing-teen-drivers-to-different-driving-scenarios/). The reason for doing this is to give your teen practice at learning how to deal with complex traffic situations.
I’ve been driving for 40 years which sounds a lot longer than it actually feels. I’ve seen a lot of interesting driving scenarios during that time; people making turns from the wrong lane, cars driving the wrong way on a one way street, people moving across 4 lanes of traffic to make an exit, others who stopped on an entrance ramp, deer crossing a highway, people drifting into my lane, and much more. It continues to amaze me how fast a driving situation can change and how equally fast I’ve had to respond to what’s happening around me.
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