Daylight Saving Time, or DST, ends at 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning, so here’s your first reminder to set your clocks back Saturday night. Enjoy the extra hour of sleep you get that night! Just in case you are curious, the time around the time change, or end of DST, happens to be one of the busiest times of year for car accidents. Here are some interesting items to note from an article by CBC News Canada.
What’s the number one cause of deaths among teens? It’s not drinking, drugs, or some type of illness, it’s car accidents. Surprised? Car accidents are responsible for over 2,600 teen deaths in 2013 and injured another 130,000 according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The number of teens dying in car accidents is up about 20% from 2011. What’s heartbreaking is most of these deaths are preventable.
What factors should be used to determine a person’s car insurance rate? Factors such as their age and gender make sense. Even the type of car they drive, where the car is parked, and their driver classification (commuter, business use, or pleasure driver) should be factored into the rate determination. But should socio-economic factors, such as a person’s education or occupation be considered? What about a person’s marital status?
On September 18, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a Notice of Violation of the Clean Air Act to Volkswagen for its deception with software designed to trick emissions tests on vehicles equipped with its TDI engine. Affected models include VW’s Passat Jetta, Golf, Beetle, and the Audi A3. There are about 500,000 of these vehicles in the US and up to 11 million worldwide.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post advising why, from a car insurance perspective, you should take defensive driving if you are “awarded” a speeding ticket (see https://wiseinsurancegroup.com/speeding-tickets-defensive-driving-car-insurance/). I thought it might be fun to expand on that with a second reason; to avoid paying for the ticket in the first place.
A client’s son called me a few weeks ago. He’d was buying and wanted to discuss what the car insurance would cost for it. The car is an early 2000 Subaru WRX that had been nicely customized with a new suspension system, engine modifications, and wheels. The car insurance issue this raised was how to address the value of a car that’s 10 to 15 years old and had $15,000 worth of customization done in the last couple of years.
I was talking with a client about their upcoming renewal earlier this week, specifically his family’s car insurance. He let me know he’d received a speeding ticket in Dallas going to work last month and wanted to know what the impact would be on his car insurance which is set to renew next month. Will it go up, and if so how much?
Imagine you’re driving down Interstate 35 at 70 miles per hour just outside of Dallas when your car begins to spray wiper fluid continuously on your windshield while the windshield wipers are flailing madly away. Or your stereo starts blaring a local radio station and you’re unable to turn down the volume, change stations, or turn it off. Maybe your air conditioner turns on at full blast but you didn’t touch anything, or you start slowing down and you’re unable to accelerate even when the pedal’s floored.
College is a wonderful and sometimes slightly scary time for most parents. Their son or daughter is spreading their wings, stepping out on their own, and beginning to prepare for life as an adult while they figure what their future holds. It is also a time when a son or daughter begins to make decisions for themselves, some of which have adult level consequences.
Car insurance company statisticians and actuaries, along with members of the US Department of Transportation were warning of a coming tsunami of senior drivers in the early 2000’s. One of the predictions was 2015 would be a watershed year of fatal crashes involving senior drivers.
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