Published: July 18, 2008 02:50 pm            

Traffic accidents add up

Over the Fourth of July weekend, I was at a party with my trusty laptop updating the holiday weekend traffic crash statistics released every six hours by the Georgia State Patrol. I was updating the Georgia Insurance Information Service Web site, www.giis.org, where we track these holiday tragedies.

Two of the guests were looking over my shoulder at the predictions and they were shocked that 23 traffic fatalities were anticipated, and that the GSP expected more than 1,000 injuries and more than 2,300 traffic crashes.

My friends both thought those were national numbers. “No,” I replied, “just in Georgia.”

After the weekend, the state patrol announced the final count: 2,293 traffic crashes, 878 injuries and 20 traffic-related fatalities. By comparison, only eight died in Tennessee and nine in Alabama.

The traffic crash data is slippery because each incident could involve one vehicle or more. Let’s just take an average of $2,500 for vehicle repairs. That’s more than $5.7 million in damage for only one vehicle in each crash.

Now we can estimate $1,000 for each of the 878 injuries. That’s a really low multiplier, but $878,000 pushes our total to about $7 million and we haven’t even counted those who were injured so badly they either died at the scene or at a hospital soon afterwards.

Only a few occurred in the Atlanta metro, two in the city, one in DeKalb County and two in Clayton County.

So how do these traffic crashes affect you and me? Insurers pay, in many cases for the following:

• Ambulance fees: varies

• Wrecker fees: varies

• Vehicle repair costs: $2,500/average (low)

• Medical expenses: Several hundred to many thousands of dollars

• Attorney fees: Insurers incur attorney fees as well as their clients

• Court costs: varies

• Accident report fees, $5 and up

• Sadly, funeral costs: $5,000 to $10,000 or more

• Insurance settlement costs: $5,000 to $15,000 or more

Often, costs are more expensive for insurers the larger the metro area. Even within a metro, insurance rates vary depending on the crime rate, say for stolen vehicles, depending on where the vehicle is parked or housed.

Let’s not forget all those who received traffic citations or were jailed for DUI charges or those ticketed for speeding, reckless driving and the at-fault drivers in those 2,000-plus crashes. All these factors contribute to the cost of auto insurance often by age bracket and the number of vehicle crashes in the area where the insured lives.

Since so much of insurance rating is based on previous experience over time, if enough drivers reduce accident rates, traffic violations, the number of stolen vehicles in their area and the amount of vehicular vandalism, rates could actually be reduced.

Stronger competition by insurers also tends to put downward pressure on rates, but over time, driver experience is more of a constant than the ups and downs of competition.

“Drive safely” is not just an expression like “have a nice day.” If enough of us improve our driving habits, it can help lower rates.



David Colmans is executive director of the Georgia Insurance Information Service. Contact him at (770) 565-3806 or by e-mail at dcolmans@giis.org.

        

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