Month: June 2018
Have you ever seen a teenager driving their car with one hand on the wheel and the other hand wrapped around their cell phone with their thumb frantically plunking on their keyboard? It happens all the time. Theres no discipline when it comes to teens and everything has to be taken care of right now. It cant wait until you get out of the car. Texting while driving is one of the leading causes of teen car accidents in the United States.
The texting-while-driving epidemic is just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the statistics on teenagers and accidents are just as staggering. According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, for all people who get in accidents, theres a four to one ratio between teenagers and older drivers respectively. That means people from the age of sixteen to nineteen are four times more likely to be the vehicle operator in a car crash than people who are older than them.
Teenage drivers are more likely to drive erratically, follow too closely, drive too fast, fail to negotiate turns and changing lanes, neglect their mirrors, and fail to recognize hazards in the road. They are more likely to drive late hours into the night when most accidents occur and they are more likely to drink alcohol. Hey, dont get me wrong, you might not be prone to all these pitfalls, but these are the tendencies of teens as a large group. And these numbers show that, as a group, teens show evidence of their lack of control.
Car insurance companies follow the numbers to a tee. They are cared about only one statistic – their profit margin. So when a new teenager driver is looking to get into a new car and need car insurance for it, the car insurance companies automatically place that driver into a high risk category. So getting a new car insured for a teenage driver is more expensive than it is for older drivers with clean records. Car insurance companies wont need to probe any further into who the teenager is, where they drive, what hours of the day they typically drive, how often they use their car.
Although, auto insurance companies might offer some leniency for teens who reside in low risk areas of the country in cities where basically nothing bad happens. But even then, teenage car insurance is higher than it is for older drivers.
Over the years, the technology used to calculate car insurance premiums has changed dramatically. Actuaries used to figure out premium levels by hand using books of statistical data. Later, adding machines and early computers ground through the numbers. More recently, online forms were invented which allowed you to get a quote online.
After all that time grinding things out, what most insurers and consumers wanted was speed. As a result, the current model for most traditional or mainline insurance companies in Australia consists of just a few questions. With these tiny points of data, a quote is generated based on aggregated consumer averages.
The result is a fast quote, but not a very accurate one. Most people dont notice that they are being treated as averages. They simply pay the quoted amount and pay rate increases even if they are accident free. However, you dont have to settle for this outdated and inaccurate system any more.
While most insurers havent gotten there yet, there are a few car insurance companies that have been pioneering a new way of calculating premiums. This new pricing methodology is based around creating highly detailed risk profiles of potential customers. This allows a calculation of premium that can truly separate high-risk from low risk customers.
There are several winning elements to this methodology. However, for consumers like you, the main benefit is often lower prices. If you are a good driver with a limited number of claims, you can really make home some substantial savings by switching to a company using this in-depth modelling framework to calculate rates for insurance cover.
It can feel a bit strange, especially after years of living with the old speed-is-everything system. Thats not to imply that this method isnt fast, mind you. It simply asks several additional questions about parking locations, length of commute to work, and so on.
As one of the early adopters, you stand to benefit the most. While your friends potter along with outdated insurance policies with off-the-rack premiums, you can have a custom tailored premium that only charges for the real risk you face as a driver and customer. Youll be able to quit subsidizing the behaviours of others through blanket premiums, and get to enjoy the fruits of your own careful behaviour on the road.
This is especially true if you really arent an “average” driver. If you only drive a few days a week, work from home and dont use your car regularly, or are retired and dont drive long distances, you have a dramatically different risk profile than most Australians. Yet you have been paying “average” rates for years, since the old method never inquired about your true habits.
Even if youre not a fan of the new and different, this is a new technology youll want to embrace. The new technology behind this quoting system isnt all flash and sparkle. It truly represents a way to make insurance premiums cheaper for you through more accurate pricing of your insurance cover based on your real risk profile.