Safer Vehicles = Less Money for Car Insurance Coverage

Paying less for car insurance coverage is enough to make any driver jump for joy.

As more technology takes over our vehicles, driving is getting safer.

Accident statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released this month show that as a result of vehicles getting safer, accidents and injuries from accidents have started to decrease. They have estimated that your chances of getting into an accident for every 100,000 miles that you drive has decreased by 5% just between a vehicle released in 2000 and one released in 2008. You also now have an 82% chance of walking away from a car accident uninjured in a 2008 model vehicle as compared to a 79% chance with a 2000 model.

With this increase in safety, your insurance coverage will be affected.

Safety Equipment Affecting Insurance Coverage

Every time a new car model is released or redesigned, it has more bells and whistles than the one before. Most of these new features are to draw consumers away from the competition, but a lot of them are also making vehicles safer.

With each new safety feature that is added to a vehicle, the odds of you getting into or being hurt in a car accident is decreased. Some of these safety features include:

• Back-up Cameras
• Electronic Stability Control
• Seatbelts
• Safer Airbags
• More Airbags
• ABS
• Daytime Running Headlamps
• Traction Control
• Collision Avoidance Technology

These are just some of the safety features that can be found in vehicles today. A good deal of them have become standard (airbags) in all new models. Others have been around for a long time, but are being used more often now because of new laws that enforce their use (seatbelts).

Exactly How Does a Safer Vehicle Affect My Insurance Coverage?

Okay, stop and think about this for a minute. Why do we have insurance in the first place?

Insurance is there to pay for the physical damages and injuries from a car accident, right? If we are getting into less car accidents and there are less injuries resulting from these accidents, then our insurance coverage is going to be affected.

When an insurance company determines how much to charge you for insurance they pull both your Motor Vehicle Report (MVR) as well as a C.L.U.E. report. Both of these reports tell them how many car accidents you have been in, and how much was paid out for claims you have filed. With driving a safer car that decreases your chance of an accident, there will be less, if any, accident surcharges that your insurance company will be able to add to your insurance coverage premium; resulting in a lower rate.

Car Insurance Coverage in the Future

A research and advisory firm by the name of Celent predicts that in the near future (2023 to 2027) that there could be a drastic decrease in the car insurance industry due to: collision avoidance technology, automated traffic enforcement and even robot cars. They believe that the combination of these three will lead to a decrease in insurance losses which will lead to a loss of revenue from insurance premiums.

What do you think about these possible changes coming? Post a comment and let us know if you are seeing cheaper insurance premium because of having a safer car or if you think that insurance coverage may eventually become a thing of the past.