Inspiration By Experience

According to the Book of Common Prayer we often leave undone the things we ought to have done. It’s a fact of life. In many ways, we are our own worst enemies. Yet, for most everyday purposes, there are no penalties. We do the things we left undone when we have the time. We might never actually catch up with the backlog, but we keep moving forward. Except there are times when the failure produces instant consequences and, no matter how hard we try, it’s impossible to go back and put it right. Let’s be clear about this. The majority of traffic accidents could be avoided if everyone followed the rules of the road and kept a proper lookout. But we are easily distracted, multitasking when we should focus on the driving. This leaves the insurance companies with a bill and a problem.

In a no-fault state, it does not matter whether the insured driver or the others involved were negligent. The insurance company pays out regardless. But this only applies in twelve states. The remainder rely on the law of tort which order the party at fault to pay compensation to the other. So, if you were not at fault, your insurance company collects the compensation from the other driver and, in theory, suffers no loss. But if the other driver was not insured or underinsured, or you were at fault, your insurer now faces a loss. If this was just down to the math, the insurer would calculate a “fair” premium rate increase and slowly recover the loss. But if the insurer put up the rate every time one of its drivers was at fault, many of those drivers would move to a competing company. So the math has to bend to match social considerations. Sometimes, the insurers have to accept the loss. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone knows about the professional criminals who are now working up and down the country to bilk insurers out of their money. They stage accidents, fake injuries and receive several billion dollars a year for their trouble. Why, you ask, do they get away with this. The answer comes in two parts. The first is at state level. As you might have noticed, almost all states are running deficits and are under pressure to find savings – for some reason, no state wants to be seen raising taxes. This means even essential services are being cut. So when it comes to law enforcement, where does a Police Chief spend his reduced budget? What are the priorities? Well, we all want to feel safe so a focus on violent crimes like robbery and burglary wins votes in the election. So-called white collar crime takes a back seat. That means local police forces only investigate fraud when it’s really serious, i.e. there’s a lot of media coverage. The FBI are interested in anything crossing state lines and there is a task force set up to deal with insurance fraud. But this is a drop in the ocean when you consider how many billion dollars are involved every year.

The second reason is that you are not exactly overjoyed by the prospect of better fraud detection. Just imagine the sequence of events. Insurance companies have to recruit and train investigators to work alongside claims adjusters. This immediately boosts the insurer’s costs which get passed on to you in higher premium rates. Now all these eager-beaver investigators finish their training and they are released on to the current files. Suddenly everything slows down as these investigators decide whether there’s anything fishy about your claim. How long are you going to put up with someone poking around your claim to decide whether you really did suffer whiplash in that accident? At what point do you start complaining? It’s possible, of course, that these investigators may detect real fraud. If so, the savings they make could start paying their salaries and the premium rates would come down. Well that’s the theory, anyway, and we can all dream. Read the rest of this entry »

The problem can be stated simply. If you take your eyes off the road, you will not see the other vehicle coming toward you. This makes you a danger to other road users. The group most likely to fall into this trap are young drivers. Not only are they the least experienced behind the wheel. They are also the ones with the most peer pressure to reply to the text message or answer the cell phone call immediately. The evidence cannot be more clear. Looking at all the different ways in which teens die through disease and accidents, crashes in motor-vehicles are the leading cause of death. The government estimates that, in 2009, about 5,500 people were killed and more than half-a-million injured because one of the drivers was distracted.

In a perfect world, this would be resolved by a discussion at home. As a parent, you would sit down with your children and explain the risks. The statistics are available on the internet to back up your warnings. Your children would nod their heads wisely and swear by all they hold holy not to continue this dangerous practice. Except this would not work in most families. What teens say to their parents is not how they act when they are outside the home. So now comes the hard choice. Do you sit back and rely on prayer every time they drive off into the wild blue yonder, or do you take positive steps? First, a little law: it’s a criminal offense to operate any transmitter that will block or jam wireless communications. So you would face big fines if you were found jamming mobile phone signals. But it’s probably not an offense if you instal equipment in your vehicle that acts as a passive block to the signal. The reason for the distinction is that if you created a cone of silence around your vehicle by transmitting a signal to jam all the cell towers, you would cut off all the other users in your area. While this might make the roads safer, it would seriously inconvenience everyone else. More importantly, it might interfere with emergency calls for the police and ambulance. So passive shielding is probably legal because it does not interfere with any other vehicle or person on the sidewalk. Taking this simple step means you no longer have trust issues with your teen (until he or she works out how to turn it off or get round the shielding, e.g. by putting an antenna outside the vehicle). Read the rest of this entry »