The Highway Loss Data Institute recently performed a study of car insurance claims to determine how well some of the new safety technologies that are being installed into new cars are doing in terms of preventing accidents or protecting occupants in an accident.  Their results showed that some of these technologies were clear winners while some were not living up to their promise.  If you are considering purchasing a new car, you might be faced with having to make a choice about whether or not you want one of these new safety tools in car.  Read on to see which ones might be worth the costs and which may not.

To glean information about these newer safety systems in cars, researchers looked at collision, property damage and bodily injury claims on vehicles with model years between 2000 and 2011.  They studied claims occurring between January 2008 and August 2011.  The analyst chose to study insurance claims because of the sheer volume of data that is available for fender benders and other accidents.  It would have taken decades more time to accumulate this level of data if they simply choose to use fatal accidents as their study starting point.

So which new safety gadgets provided the best results?  Well, the two that showed the biggest reduction in crashes were adaptive headlights and forward collision avoidance systems, particularly those that were able to put on the brakes independent of the driver.   Adaptive headlights are headlights that are able to bend with the road and shine around the curve that you are approaching.  As you approach a curve in the road, adaptive headlights will be aimed where you are headed as opposed to straight out in front of the car. This also minimizes the shine of headlights in opposing driver’s eyes.  These headlights manage this trick by using electronic sensors to detect the speed of the car, how far the driver has turned the steering wheel, and the yaw of the car.

Researchers found that vehicles made by Acura and Mercedes Benz with a forward-collision avoidance system with autonomous braking had 14% fewer claims under property damage liability than the same models without this feature.  Volvo’s system reduced these types of wrecks by 10%.  In addition, adaptive headlights reduced property damage claims by as much as 10% as well.

But what about the duds?  The big surprise was with lane-departure warning systems.  These are systems which alert drivers if they cross the center line or are in danger of running off the road.  The data studied showed that these systems actually increased claims.  Perhaps they were distracting the drivers.    While the increased chance of a wreck with these systems is not statistically significant, the researchers did draw the conclusion that these types of systems were not reducing accidents. 

A few other systems, like blind spot detection and park assist will require more study.   There was not enough data for the research to determine one way or another if these systems were reducing claims. 

At Clinard Insurance Group, we want all insurance buyers to be informed consumers.  If you would like help with any insurance policies that you buy, I hope you will give us a call.  You can reach us, toll free, at 877-687-7557.

Anyone who watches television these days knows that in almost every ad sequence, there is at least one ad trying to get you to buy their car insurance.  In NC you don’t see as many of these ads for home insurance because at this point in time, insurance companies are losing money on home insurance and making it back on auto insurance.  So the pitch these days is for your auto insurance policy.  These ads must work or the big players wouldn’t keep buying them.  But just how much is being spent to try and convince you to switch your auto insurance policy?  

I think you will find the numbers shocking.  The biggest spender of all is Geico.  Geico’s marketing costs in 2011 were $993.8 million.  That’s almost a billion dollars!  And this is up over 10% from the 2010 costs for Geico.  And yet, this 10% increase for 2011 is far below the 15% average increase in marketing spending industry wide.  But to help you put Geico’s spending in context, they were responsible for roughly one out of every six dollars spent on marketing in the property and casualty insurance industry.

Bigger is not always better and I’m reminded of this when reading the internal notes of an Allstate presentation last October.  In these notes Allstate says that the volume of calls at their call centers dropped by 30% after they had cut back on direct mail solicitations.  Call centers?  Really?  I hope that most of you reading this understand the value of having your own agent, one that you can call when you need, one that has a direct dial number to his or her desk and one that knows you and your situation intimately.  You shouldn’t have to deal with faceless people at call centers to purchase quality, affordable car insurance.

I find it interesting that while auto insurance represents about 1/3 of the total of all property and casualty insurance sold, the advertising and marketing budgets for car insurance represent more than half of the total spent on property and casualty insurance marketing.  This tells me that these huge insurance companies believe that the average television watcher is the biggest sucker out there.  They surely won’t spend this same amount of money trying to reach commercial insurance customers because commercial insurance customers are too savvy to fall for the idea that all insurance policies are the same and that the lowest price is the only goal when buying insurance.  And people who buy car insurance should be just as careful as business customers because after all, you are buying car insurance to protect your assets that you have worked so hard for over the years.

If you would like to speak to an experienced, well informed agent who will take the time to listen to you, hear your story and then help you find the right policy for your needs at the lowest possible cost to you, then I hope you will consider Clinard Insurance Group.  We insure thousands of families all across North Carolina and would love to have the opportunity to show the difference between huge ad budgets and one on one consistent, professional help.  Give us a call today; toll free, at 877-687-7557.