Inspiration By Experience

Archive for the ‘auto insurance’ Category

Having a car involves many responsibilities, some of which may be not as pleasant as driving a car and involve additional costs. Yes, we are talking about vehicle insurance. It’s definitely one of the most irritating aspects of owning a car and a cash-consuming one. Ask any driver and he will tell you that his or her insurance could be less expensive, since it takes a good bite off the family budget. If you are in the same situations as millions of drivers in the country and want your car to be not as expensive to insure as it is now the following money saving tips will definitely help you optimize your costs effectively:

Modify your policy

Vehicle insurance comes in many forms and delivers many options to choose from. When there are many different coverage options included into your policy it becomes very expensive. So your aim when optimizing your insurance costs is to strip off all the unnecessary coverage features and leave only those that are really needed. In fact, the only type of coverage that is legally required is the third party liability whereas all others are optional. Sure, it doesn’t mean that you have to strip down your policy to the bare minimums. But make sure to take some time and think about the things you really need with your policy and things you can leave behind. This will certainly cut your insurance costs effectively. Read the rest of this entry »

The world would be a better place if everyone was trustworthy and honest. Sadly, human nature seems to have come with a selfish gene. We want what we haven’t got. We don’t want to pay for what we need. There was a recent piece of research which staged accidents at intersections involving a bus. The point of the study was to discover how many of the innocent people on the sidewalks would run on to the bus and claim to have been injured. Needless to say, the results did not show city dwellers in a good light. So, when people were first working through the basic statistics of assessing risks, it was obvious there was less risk if people drove only a few miles a week. But if they were commuting long distances on busy interstates, the risk of accidents grew high. The insurers reasoned it would be good to pitch the premium rates to reflect the risks. Except how could they trust the drivers to make an honest declaration of how many miles a week they drove? The answer, sadly, was that no one was trustworthy if allowed to self-certify mileage. When insurers ran a trial, asking drivers to bring in their vehicles for their odometer readings to be taken, everyone quickly learned how to wind back the count of miles.

Well, now technology has arrived that eliminates the risk of cheating – until someone learns how to hack the black boxes, that is. For now, insurers like Progressive are selling a basic policy plus monitoring equipment to plug into your vehicle. The insurer can then monitor when, where and how far you drive. Some insurers are even fitting a GPS transmitter. This is useful if your vehicle is stolen or you report a breakdown and a tow truck has to find you.

Many consider this new technology an invasion of their privacy. The question you have to answer is whether you want the discounts. As a low mileage driver, you pay a monthly premium based on how far you drive and whether you avoid driving at peak times. Before you answer, note some insurers also collect data from your vehicle showing how often you break suddenly, whether you swerve from side to side, and other features of your driving style. Should you have an accident and make a claim, the insurer has a record of how you were driving at the time. If you claimed you hit the other car because you were swerving violently to avoid a moose, the recording may show a slightly different story (ignoring the problem of explaining how there came to be a moose loose in your part of town). Read the rest of this entry »

When an airplane crashes, we’ve all been brainwashed into watching the search for the black box. That’s the onboard recording device that captures what the pilots were saying as the plane fell from the sky as well as storing all the technical information from the instruments. We’re told it’s vital to be able to explain why each aircraft crashes. After all, the larger planes carry many passengers and, if one were to crash into a city center, it could do a lot of damage. We all have an interest in reducing the risk of air accidents. That’s why we’re hooked as television cameras record submarines going down to search the seabed to recover these vital boxes and as many bits of the plane as possible. Remarkably, experts rebuild as much of the plane as possible to see more clearly what damage was sustained before the plane hit the ground or fell into the sea.

Have you heard of event data recorders (EDR)? These are the little black boxes for the vehicles we drive on our roads. In 2008, a report published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) admitted between 65 and 90% of vehicles were already fitted with EDRs. The reason for the big range in the estimate is easy to explain. Almost every new vehicle rolling off the assembly line has an EDR fitted. It’s been a standard component for many years. But it’s not entirely clear how many older vehicles are still driving around without one of these recording devices inside. All we can say is that, as we slowly throw the old vehicles away, we’ll slowly move up to 100% installation. How can you tell whether your vehicle has an EDR? Curiously, until 2011, manufacturers did not have to tell you. Now, if you look in the driver’s manual, you’ll find confirmation.

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