Do you ever feel funny about how high the premiums are for commercial auto insurance? I would tell you to stop feeling that way based on the article I found in the Insurance Journal. What is interesting to me is that most underwriters are not aware of the medical costs associated with crashes- and obviously that is a factor in both claims and premiums. Certainly the general public is not aware of this and they should be. See the article below.
Motor Vehicle Crash Injuries Costing $99 Billion a Year, or $500 per Driver
August 27, 2010
In a one-year period, the cost of medical care and productivity losses associated with injuries from motor vehicle crashes exceeded $99 billion – with the cost of direct medical care accounting for $17 billion.
A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the total annual cost amounts to nearly $500 for each licensed driver in the U.S.
The study in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention found that the one-year costs of fatal and non-fatal crash-related injuries totaled $70 billion (71 percent of total costs) for people riding in motor vehicles, such as cars and light trucks, $12 billion for motorcyclists, $10 billion for pedestrians, and $5 billion for bicyclists.
CDC researchers said they used 2005 data because, at the study time, it provided the most current source of national fatal and non-fatal injury and cost data from multiple sources.
The data is for injuries only and does not include costs of vehicle or property damage.
"Every 10 seconds, someone in the United States is treated in an emergency department for crash-related injuries, and nearly 40,000 people die from these injuries each year. This study highlights the magnitude of the problem of crash-related injuries from a cost perspective, and the numbers are staggering," said Dr. Grant Baldwin, director of CDC's Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
The study also found:
Costs related to fatal motor vehicle-related injuries totaled $58 billion. The cost of non-fatal injuries resulting in hospitalization amounted to $28 billion, and the cost of injuries to people treated in emergency departments and released was $14 billion.
More men were killed (70 percent) and injured (52 percent) in motor vehicle crashes than women. Injuries and deaths among men represented 74 percent ($74 billion) of all costs.
Teens and young adults made up 28 percent of all fatal and nonfatal motor vehicle injuries and 31 percent of the costs ($31 billion). These young people represented only 14 percent of the U.S. population.
Motorcyclists made up 6 percent of all fatalities and injuries but 12 percent of the costs, likely due to the severity of their injuries. Pedestrians, who have no protection when they are hit by vehicles and are also often severely injured, made up 5 percent of all injuries but 10 percent of total costs.
CDC's Injury Center supports strategies for prevention such as graduated driver licenses, child safety seats, primary seat belt laws, enhanced seat belt enforcement, motorcycle and bicycle helmet laws and sobriety checkpoints.
Pretty interesting is it not?
Friday, August 27, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Technologies That Will Help Trucking
I think the Insurance Journal does a very nice job. While the editor, Andrew Simpson, was probably considering private passenger vehicles and consumer interest, I see his article discussing available technologies helping trucking in the future. This may pique your interest. Also think about the in-the-pallet technology already available to prevent cargo theft. The game is changing due to technology...
Technology-- cell phones and texting technologies to be precise--gets a bad rap when it comes to safety while driving. Of course, it’s not the technology that’s unsafe it’s people. Thus a number of states and the federal government have moved to
curtail drivers from dialing or texting while driving. While trying to stamp out unsafe use of technology, it’s important to keep in mind that technology can be used to make driving safer, too. Some of the exciting technologies available include:
Blind Spot and Cross-Traffic Detection: Blind spot detection features identify
people, other vehicles, or objects within vehicles’ blind spots and provide an instant warning. Similarly, cross-traffic detection systems detect vehicles, people or objects in a vehicle’s path while backing out of a parking space and alert the driver.
Driver Recognition System: This allows multiple drivers to program various vehicle
settings including seat positions, mirror positions, and climate control and stereo
settings that can all be activated when the driver enters the vehicle.
Night Vision System: This provides a high-beam image of the road ahead, without
distracting other drivers, using an infrared light beam that is invisible to the human eye. An on-board camera is used to capture images up to 500 feet away that are then presented on a display in the vehicle’s cockpit.
Parking Assist System: Parking assist systems help drivers park backwards or
parallel park using a built-in computer and small sensorslocated at the rear of the vehicle. The parking movements can be done automatically by the vehicle.
As promising and exciting as these technologies are,car makers have to make them available and people have to know about them in order for their safety benefits on the road to be realized. According to a new Harris Interactive survey, not many people know about them. Familiarity with advanced vehicle intelligent sensing features is very low among American drivers, with fewer than one in 10 indicating they are very familiar with the features.
However, despite low familiarity, more and more drivers indicate they are likely
to purchase these features for their next new vehicle, according to the same Harris
Interactive poll. Though only six percent indicate they are extremely or very familiar with blind spot and cross-traffic detection systems, there is obvious interest in these features, with one-quarter (24 percent) of drivers saying they would be extremely or very likely to purchase this for their next vehicle. The same percentage would consider buying a night vision system. Twenty-two percent said they would be interested in buying a driver recognition system.
“Although these technologies are not well known today, expect many of them to
become commonplace over the next few years,” says Dave Pulaski, vice president of
Automotive and Transportation for Harris Interactive. “Once consumers learn about
these features and their benefits, they will clamor
for them.”
All of this suggests that if automakers and suppliers educated consumers more about these technologies, interest may increase. Perhaps some cell phone calls and texting messages from the insurance industry offering discounts would provide
some encouragement for everyone.
Technology-- cell phones and texting technologies to be precise--gets a bad rap when it comes to safety while driving. Of course, it’s not the technology that’s unsafe it’s people. Thus a number of states and the federal government have moved to
curtail drivers from dialing or texting while driving. While trying to stamp out unsafe use of technology, it’s important to keep in mind that technology can be used to make driving safer, too. Some of the exciting technologies available include:
Blind Spot and Cross-Traffic Detection: Blind spot detection features identify
people, other vehicles, or objects within vehicles’ blind spots and provide an instant warning. Similarly, cross-traffic detection systems detect vehicles, people or objects in a vehicle’s path while backing out of a parking space and alert the driver.
Driver Recognition System: This allows multiple drivers to program various vehicle
settings including seat positions, mirror positions, and climate control and stereo
settings that can all be activated when the driver enters the vehicle.
Night Vision System: This provides a high-beam image of the road ahead, without
distracting other drivers, using an infrared light beam that is invisible to the human eye. An on-board camera is used to capture images up to 500 feet away that are then presented on a display in the vehicle’s cockpit.
Parking Assist System: Parking assist systems help drivers park backwards or
parallel park using a built-in computer and small sensorslocated at the rear of the vehicle. The parking movements can be done automatically by the vehicle.
As promising and exciting as these technologies are,car makers have to make them available and people have to know about them in order for their safety benefits on the road to be realized. According to a new Harris Interactive survey, not many people know about them. Familiarity with advanced vehicle intelligent sensing features is very low among American drivers, with fewer than one in 10 indicating they are very familiar with the features.
However, despite low familiarity, more and more drivers indicate they are likely
to purchase these features for their next new vehicle, according to the same Harris
Interactive poll. Though only six percent indicate they are extremely or very familiar with blind spot and cross-traffic detection systems, there is obvious interest in these features, with one-quarter (24 percent) of drivers saying they would be extremely or very likely to purchase this for their next vehicle. The same percentage would consider buying a night vision system. Twenty-two percent said they would be interested in buying a driver recognition system.
“Although these technologies are not well known today, expect many of them to
become commonplace over the next few years,” says Dave Pulaski, vice president of
Automotive and Transportation for Harris Interactive. “Once consumers learn about
these features and their benefits, they will clamor
for them.”
All of this suggests that if automakers and suppliers educated consumers more about these technologies, interest may increase. Perhaps some cell phone calls and texting messages from the insurance industry offering discounts would provide
some encouragement for everyone.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Changes in the FMCSA Safety Management System ( SMS)
( from an article in the TIA Logistics Weekly that shows what is changing due to CSA 2010- everyone working with the trucking industry needs to be clued in)
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has announced recent updates to the Safety Measurement System.
The Data Preview assessments will be based on an improved SMS methodology. As a result of input from enforcement personnel, industry representatives, and safety experts, as well as findings from an extensive, 30-month field test, FMCSA is implementing several updates to the SMS that will make it more effective in identifying high risk and other carriers with safety compliance problems. Specifically:
The measure of exposure will be changed from Power Units (PUs) only to a combination of PUs and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) in the Unsafe Driving as part of Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASIC) and Crash Indicator. In addition, these two BASICs will change from using PUs as a safety event grouping (formerly referred to as peer grouping) to using the number of crashes for the Crash Indicator and the number of inspections with a violation for the Unsafe Driving BASIC.
The measure of exposure will change from PUs to the number of relevant inspections in the Controlled Substances/Alcohol BASIC; Severity weights for some roadside inspection violations will be updated; and FMCSA will employ a more strategic approach to addressing motor carriers with a history of size and weight violations rather than counting these violations in the Cargo-Related BASIC; the new approach will include alerts to roadside inspectors when carriers have a history of size and weight violations.
These enhancements will allow the Agency to more effectively identify motor carriers with safety performance and compliance problems.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has announced recent updates to the Safety Measurement System.
The Data Preview assessments will be based on an improved SMS methodology. As a result of input from enforcement personnel, industry representatives, and safety experts, as well as findings from an extensive, 30-month field test, FMCSA is implementing several updates to the SMS that will make it more effective in identifying high risk and other carriers with safety compliance problems. Specifically:
The measure of exposure will be changed from Power Units (PUs) only to a combination of PUs and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) in the Unsafe Driving as part of Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Categories (BASIC) and Crash Indicator. In addition, these two BASICs will change from using PUs as a safety event grouping (formerly referred to as peer grouping) to using the number of crashes for the Crash Indicator and the number of inspections with a violation for the Unsafe Driving BASIC.
The measure of exposure will change from PUs to the number of relevant inspections in the Controlled Substances/Alcohol BASIC; Severity weights for some roadside inspection violations will be updated; and FMCSA will employ a more strategic approach to addressing motor carriers with a history of size and weight violations rather than counting these violations in the Cargo-Related BASIC; the new approach will include alerts to roadside inspectors when carriers have a history of size and weight violations.
These enhancements will allow the Agency to more effectively identify motor carriers with safety performance and compliance problems.
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