Declarations
“Since the start of the pandemic, Americans have embraced riskier driving behavior, such as impaired driving, speeding, and failure to wear seatbelts.”
— Robert Passmore, vice president of auto and claims policy for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said regarding a “concerning trend” that is leading to more crashes at a time when the cost of medical care and vehicle repairs are escalating. Motorists apparently acquired bad habits during the pandemic, causing increases in claim frequency throughout 2021. According to the National Highway Safety Administration, the vehicle crash fatality rate jumped 12% in the first nine months of 2021 compared to the same period in the prior year — to 1.36 deaths per 1 million miles driven.
“What Chrysler did was they had a safety system that the Insurance Institute of America has studied that says it will prevent 60% of rear end collisions. It’s a massive game changer in terms of automobile collisions.”
— Brent Ghelfi, an attorney for the family of a little girl who was killed when her mother’s car was rear-ended by a Jeep on a Phoenix freeway, applauded an Arizona Supreme Court ruling that the family can sue the SUV’s manufacturer for wrongful death because it did not install automatic emergency braking devices that were available as optional equipment.
“If a loss requires replacement of items and the replaced items do not match in quality, color, or size, the insurer shall replace all items in the area to conform to a reasonably uniform appearance.”
— From Georgia House Bill 1310, which would require insurers to replace entire roofs and other sections of a home if a repair job does not match up in color. The issue arose after thousands of homeowners purchased a type of Atlas roofing shingle that has been discontinued. Supporters of the bill pointed to Florida, where full replacement for roofs has been required for most homeowner policies for years. But Florida insurance advocates said the bill is the last thing Georgia needs, and that the full-replacement requirement has invited fraud in Florida and has driven claims and costs through the roof.
“Because it hasn’t happened, and with people’s busy everyday lives, it kind of falls into the background.”
— Robbie Myers, emergency management director for Butler County, Missouri, warned of a potential catastrophic earthquake in the New Madrid zone, a fault line in southeast region of the state. Experts believe there is a 7% to 10% chance of a magnitude 7.0 or greater earthquake in the next 50 years within the New Madrid zone, and a 25% to 40% chance of a smaller but still potentially devastating magnitude 6.0 quake. In addition to thousands of deaths, bridges crossing the Mississippi River could fall, major highways including Interstate 55 could buckle, and oil and gas pipelines could break, causing nationwide disruptions, experts said.
“The hurricanes that we get, there’s a higher probability that they can bloom up into major hurricanes.”
— Louisiana’s state climatologist Barry Keim on a recent United Nations report warning that extreme weather is becoming more common along the U.S. Gulf Coast. From Texas to Florida, which has the longest coastline of any state, the entire Gulf Coast is under serious threat from rising seas as the planet’s polar ice caps melt, the U.N. report says. In Louisiana, the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has a plan with “very specific projects,” the U.N. report said, such as dredging to replenish wetlands and rebuilding barrier islands damaged by storms.
“There’s a reason we’re known as the Insurance Capital of the World.”
— Connecticut Insurance Commissioner Andrew N. Mais said on March 10, 2022, as the UK Government announced a formal agreement with Connecticut Insurance & Financial Services (CT IFS), the MetroHartford Alliance (MHA), the Connecticut Insurance Department, and Insurtech UK to launch a new “Insurtech Corridor.” The InsurTech Corridor is now officially open and set up to support companies in the UK and Connecticut.