Six ways to corral teen drivers
January 31st, 2012
Karen Haywood Queen
Whether they’re showing off or texting, novice teen drivers often put themselves, their passengers, other drivers and property at risk when they’re behind the wheel.
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You can’t ride shotgun on every trip, but here are six ways you can steer your teen’s driving in the right direction. Following this advice may give you some peace of mind — and may even prevent a spike in the already pricey auto insurance coverage for your teen.
1. Limit the number of teen passengers.
“Teens tend to be very distracting to each other,” says Sue Duchak, who leads the Allstate Foundation’s teen driving program. “The presence of even one passenger increases the chance of a fatal crash. The presence of a male passenger nearly doubles the risk of a fatal crash.”
2. Restrict nighttime driving.
Nearly half the teens who died in car crashes in 2009 were killed between 3 p.m. and midnight, Duchak says.
Even though teens have good night vision compared with older drivers, their lack of experience means they don’t adapt as well to driving at night, says Bruce Simons-Morton, a researcher at the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. For teens, late-night driving many times can involve drinking alcohol and other dangerous behavior.
3. Cut the chatter.
“Using a cellphone while driving is like driving drunk,” Duchak says, delaying a driver’s response as much as having a blood-alcohol level of 0.08.
Still, many teens and adults insist they can multitask in the car. The problem is teens aren’t good at concentrating first on the primary task of driving, Simons-Morton says.
In one study on a test track, researchers had adult and teen drivers drive through a traffic signal several times, Simons-Morton says. Then researchers gave cellphones to the teen and adult drivers, and asked them to make calls to obtain information.
Adults were clumsy and couldn’t complete the task. “As experienced drivers, they were uncomfortable not looking up,” Simons-Morton says. On the other hand, “teen-agers were fantastic at using the cellphone and getting the information,” he says. “But they were highly likely to run the red light.”
4. Ban texting.
Texting on a cellphone is even more dangerous than talking. “No one should text while driving,” Simons-Morton says. “It is perhaps the most dangerous secondary task.”
Parents should explain to teen drivers how and why the behavior is dangerous. Put it in terms teenagers can understand. For instance, Duchak suggests, you can tell a teen driver that at 55 mph, a five-second text takes his eyes off the road for the length of a football field. Also, you and your teen driver can visit websites like Distraction.gov to see stories of traffic deaths blamed on texting and other distracted driving.
Simons-Morton recommends that parents be good role models. “Put the phone down while driving. Make a family commitment to avoid distracted driving,” he says.
5. Don’t buy a car for your teen.
“When teens share a vehicle with a parent, they do not drive as risky as when they have exclusive access to a vehicle,” Simons-Morton says.
6. Don’t let a younger teen drive.
Nine states still allow teens to drive at age 14, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, but you can set your own age limit even if you live in one of those states. Driving at 14 may have been fine 50 years ago, Simons-Morton says, but roads are far more sophisticated now.
“Driving conditions are a lot more complicated,” Simons-Morton says. “Modern vehicles are very powerful. Even small cities have extensive traffic.”
If you’re worried that your teen is too immature to drive, don’t let him get that driver’s license even if your state allows it.
“Every parent knows their teens are more mature at 17 than at 16 and more mature at 20 than 18,” Simons-Morton says. “Delaying licensure is a good thing.”
Nick DiUlio
A troubling development has emerged in auto insurance: Nationwide, the cost and frequency of claims is on the rise. However, experts say this surprising bump shouldn’t trigger higher auto insurance premiums — at least in the short term.
A recent study from the Insurance Research Council, a nonprofit unit of the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters and the Insurance Institute of America, found the nationwide cost of auto insurance claims rose between 2008 and 2010. Throughout the past decade, those costs have declined or been stable. At the same time, the frequency of auto insurance claims also has gone up — in the opposite direction compared with previous years.
“This was somewhat surprising and a little troubling,” says David Corum, vice president of the Insurance Research Council. “The long-term trend of decreasing claim frequency may be ending.”
According to Corum, personal injury protection (PIP) claim costs — those related to medical expenses, lost wages and other damages — per insured vehicle rose nationwide by more than 18 percent from 2008 to 2010. Moreover, when it came to bodily injury liability claims — which cover the medical costs of injuries to passengers in your car and other cars after an accident — 2010 was the first year since 1994 that frequency did not decrease.
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“This may be a statistical blip or it may be a fundamental change in the trend of claim frequency,” Corum says. “If the frequency is no longer going down and instead going up, consumers could be in for some trouble.”
The effect on your premium
Eli Lehrer, vice president of nonprofit research center The Heartland Institute, says the findings in the Insurance Research Council study probably won’t affect the average consumer’s auto policy right away. A single-year increase in claim costs isn’t enough to warrant higher insurance rates. Since insurers’ profits “are currently pretty healthy,” he says, there isn’t much room for them to pass these costs along to consumers.
“I would guess that a two- or three-year trend would probably be enough to start affecting rates, but not just a single year,” Lehrer says. “I think the auto insurance market is just too competitive right now.”
What drivers should be most concerned about are their habits behind the wheel, says Jim Whittle, chief claims counsel for the American Insurance Association trade group. A person’s driving record and claims history remain the most important factors used to determine insurance rates.
“Your individual driving habits are extremely important,” Whittle says. “If you are safe and responsible, you’re probably going to have fewer accidents and fewer claims than someone who isn’t a good driver, and that’s where you’ll see the most noticeable impact on your premiums.”
Fault vs. no-fault
The Insurance Research Council report focused a lot on the increased cost of PIP claims in three of the largest states that use a no-fault approach to car injury compensation — Florida, Michigan and New York. In Florida, for example, the average PIP claim cost per insured vehicle rose 62 percent between 2008 and 2010.
Whittle says the no-fault premise is simple: If a policyholder is involved in an accident, that policyholder’s auto insurance company is responsible for reimbursement without proof of fault. Policyholders aren’t allowed to seek legal damages for losses caused by other drivers.
In states without no-fault systems, however, policyholders must go through a process to determine whether a defendant is liable, and whether the costs are reasonable and are tied to an accident.
Mike Barry, a spokesman for the nonprofit Insurance Information Institute, says fraud and abuse within the no-fault system causes consumers in New York to collectively pay tens of millions of dollars more in premiums.
“What happens is certain medical providers take a bill that may have been $ 6,000 and make it $ 8,000,” Barry says. “While it’s illegal, there are some players in the medical community who figure no one’s going to notice a bill that went up by $ 2,000. If this is done enough times in a state with 19 million people, it’s going to drive up the cost of auto insurance.”
Insurance fraud within the property and casualty industry — which includes auto insurance — costs about $ 30 billion a year, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Frank Scafidi, a spokesman for the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau, says PIP fraud is part of that figure. Scafidi says the findings of the Insurance Research Council report can be explained partly by the high volume of insurance fraud schemes around the country, particularly in no-fault states.
“Phony accidents followed by unnecessary or repetitive medical treatments performed by questionable providers all add to the cost that we pay for coverage,” Scafidi says. “These findings (by the council) are not at all surprising for those of us in the business of investigating insurance fraud.”
Other explanations
Fraud and abuse are not the only reasons for the increase in claims costs. Lehrer says the continued rise in medical costs shares some blame.
“The largest bills that auto insurers have to pay are almost always medical bills,” Lehrer says. “And even though most auto claims don’t involve injury, almost all expensive auto claims do, and a typical hospital stay costs more than the average car.”
Insurance expert Frank Cacchione, CEO of New Jersey-based TNC Management Group, says the increase in the filing of auto insurance claims can be attributed to:
• More high-performance, sporty vehicles on the road.
• An increase in driving now that economic recovery is slowly under way.
• Distractions caused by drivers who are talking and texting on their cellphones.
“I think the combination of these factors will lead to more rate increases in 2012 and, at some point, stronger restrictions on the use of cellphones while operating a vehicle,” Cacchione says.
The weak economy also may shoulder some of the blame for increased claim costs, says Ernie Bray, CEO of AutoClaims Direct, which provides claims services and technology to insurers.
“Anytime you have tough economic conditions, you have a lot more people trying to exaggerate their claims in order to cash in,” Bray says. “They see insurance claims as a way to get a little extra money, and this drives up the cost of claims. Someone has to pay for this, and ultimately it’s the consumer.”
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