Teen driver car insurance is much more expensive than car insurance for experienced drivers.  Teens need time to develop skills behind the wheel and to learn good judgment when operating a vehicle.  I think texting adds an additional layer of risk for teen drivers.

Many teenagers use texting as their primary form of communication with their friends.  They use texts to chat, make plans and even just waste time when they are bored.  This behavior leads some teens to become what I call chronic texters.   These chronic texting teens are often so attached to the text activity on their phones that you can lose them in the middle of a sentence or the middle of a conversation.  They look down at their phones and for a moment they have simply forgotten that you exist or that you are even engaged in a conversation with them.  The incoming text and their response to it suddenly take precedence over all other sensory experience for them in that moment.  Now this behavior is annoying when it happens during a conversation or at a restaurant.  But if it happens while they are driving, then you have more than an aggravation, you have extreme danger for them and all drivers around them.  Combine the distraction of texting with a teenager’s lack of driving experience and you have some pretty scary behavior going on on our highways and roads.

Recently a Miami court awarded $8.8 million to the family of a woman killed in a crash.  Her car was hit by a teen driver who was speeding and texting at the same time.  The phone records show an outgoing text from his phone at 8:19 pm and paramedics were called to the accident at 8:21 pm.  Think about this, if your child is driving and texting and has an accident, the court is going to know that your child was texting while driving.  What is this knowledge going to mean for the judgment against your child?  Yeah, it is going to mean a lot more money out of your pocket.  So if I can’t convince you to teach your child not to touch his or her phone at all while driving using the safety angle, maybe the thought of losing all that you own will convince you.  This is serious stuff, people are dying out there!

Any family with assets to lose who has a teenage driver should seriously consider buying higher liability limits.  You may need to add a personal umbrella policy to your portfolio of insurance policies to better protect your assets from the losses a teen driver could cause you.  I would suggest a two pronged approach to this problem.  First of all, talk to your child and help them understand that the phone must be off limits while they are driving.  Model this behavior yourself so that they see that you practice what you preach.  Secondly, talk to your insurance agent and purchase as high of a liability insurance limit as you can afford to protect your assets from the risk of your young drivers on your policy.

If you need help with your teen driver insurance, or if you would like a quote on your auto insurance, please visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com, or call us, toll free at 877-687-7557.  If you would like to see some of our free tools that can help you teach your teen to be a safer driver, please visit our teen driver insurance page.

Auto accidents are a pretty common occurrence.  You may someday find yourself involved in one.  What you do and say after an accident can often have a big impact on who is ultimately blamed for the accident and thus whose insurance pays out for the damages.  Here are some tips to help you move through the process in a way that should ultimately leave the blame for the wreck with the person who actually caused it.

Get a police report.  Seems obvious but I have seen situations where people were so convinced that they were at fault that they agreed to pay for the damages, only to be surprised when the other party’s insurance paid for the damages instead. I have seen accidents where the person at fault denied even being in a wreck.  The police report is designed to protect you if you are not at fault.  Always call the police, no matter how small the accident.  The police report will provide the insurance adjuster with the drivers names and contact information, witness information as well as a brief summary from the officer.  If you don’t think the accident was your fault, then tell the police officer this.

Get the other party’s information.   If they are in a hurry and don’t want to wait for the police, don’t let them leave without getting as much contact information about them as you can.  This should include the make and model of the car and the license plate number as well as the driver’s name and contact information.   If you are in a hurry, try to let that go and be patient enough to wait for the police officer.  Recently one of our clients who claimed she wasn’t at fault in an accident didn’t wait around for the police officer to arrive.  She was shocked to read the police report later as it didn’t accurately reflect what she thought happened.  

Take a lot of photos.  These days almost everyone has a camera on their phone.  Take photos of anything and everything you can think of.  Include photos of skid marks, debris fields as well as photos of the cars both before and after they are moved from the scene of the accident.  It is difficult to know just what might be important later so the more photos you can take, the better.

Make your statement.  Your statement about what happened will need to be made with the officer but then you will need to record a statement later with the insurance adjuster.  When you give your statement to the adjuster, be sure to include everything you can think of, no matter how trivial it may seem to you.  The adjuster will compare your statement with the summary provided by the police report and along with that and the other party’s statements and photos will then decide who is at fault.

If you have any difficulty with any of your claims, you know we are here to help you through the process.  If you are Clinard Insurance client, then you will not be alone in the process of settling a claim.  We are here to help you through the claims process in any way that you need us.