Governor Rick Scott and CFO of the state Jeff Atwater had set their priorities right this session, with the entry on the top of the list being the motion to pass the bill that could put an end to the increasing auto insurance frauds which was in turn compounding the auto insurance problems in the state.
According to the rules of the newly passed bill, there will be a specific limit up to which the attorneys can claims as legal fees and the people who are hurt in the accident and plan to file a PIP claim should visit one of the hospital emergency rooms or walk-in clinics within just seven days of the incident.
Read more…
Bills currently being considered by the Arizona and South Carolina legislatures would put in place anti-steering laws related to motor vehicle glass repair.
The bills would keep glass-repair shops or third party administrators who have an ownership interest in a glass-repair shop from referring or steering business toward the facility that theyre associated with.
They would also be barred from soliciting repair business from car owners based on information obtained during the claims process.
As with most steering bills, the authors aim is to maintain policyholders choice when getting their cars fixed after a claim and to level the playing field for repair shops in the state.
But the insurance industry says beefing up the states anti-steering laws would make the repair process less streamlined and that the move could ultimately end up increasing the average cost of car insurance in Arizona and South Carolina.
This bill would severely limit auto insurers ability to choose business practices that best serve their customers, limit choices available to consumers for repairing damaged auto glass and potentially increase costs that impact insurance premiums, said Bob Passmore, the senior director of personal lines at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), in a statement.
PCI says consumers benefit from insurers ability to recommend shops and to use direct repair programs where coverage providers have a list of preferred shops that they suggest to policyholders.
Read more…
Despite the fact that New Hampshire drivers don’t have a law where wearing seat belts are compulsory, they seem to be buckling up. Wearing seat belts reduces fatalities and injuries to a very large extent. As per the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, wearing seat belts help in reducing fatalities by 45% and risk of suffering serious injuries by 50% for those who are sitting in the front. The surprising fact is that New Hampshire drivers seem to be buckling up much more than the drivers in Massachusetts.
During 2010, New Hampshire had ranked last in the entire nation, when it came to seat belt use and only around 72% of the people were actually using seat belts, as per statistics available. M
Read more…
The full Florida Senate could soon have a chance to vote on a bill that would prohibit drivers from sending and reading text messages from behind the wheel.
Florida is among the eight remaining states that currently have no restrictions on motorists use of cell phones while driving, despite growing awareness of the dangers of driver distraction and recent pushes from insurance companies and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to get as many states as possible to ban the practice.
One more committee has to approve the proposed legislation before it moves on to a vote from the full Senate.
The bill is modeled after a sample law made available by the DOT.
Read more…
Getting an auto insurance done is an easy job. The auto insurance companies will provide the customers with all assistance in getting an auto insurance done for the vehicle. The real testing time is when it is time to claim against the auto insurance policy after the vehicle meets a fatal accident or has some damage inflicted on it. Though people might question why getting a claim can be difficult because the customers are paying premiums for the policy; the fact is that settling auto claims is a time taking affair and quite disgusting at times. There are many things that should be kept under consideration; if an automobile faces an accident and is insured.
Read more…
MPs have called on the insurance industry to abandon sharp practices in the management of car accident claims.
Read more…
Progressive announced Monday it has been issued a fourth patent for its usage-based car insurance program, Snapshot, which electronically tracks driving behavior and offers policyholders an opportunity to earn discounts by showing safe habits and low mileage.
The insurer said in a news release that the latest patent “relates, in part, to producing a driver safety score based on monitored driving data.”
The voluntary Snapshot program, which officials say is used by 250,000 Progressive customers in 39 states and the District of Columbia—making it far larger than similar programs offered by other coverage providers—relies on data that is collected by a device inserted into the diagnostic port of an insured vehicle and relayed to the company.
Policyholders can earn savings of as much as 30 percent if the feedback shows they log relatively few miles and operate the vehicle safely when it comes to factors such as acceleration and braking.
“For more than 15 years we have invested a great deal into the research, development, testing and piloting of usage-based insurance programs and will continue to do so,” Glenn Renwick, Progressive’s president and chief executive officer, said in a news release. “It’s gratify
Read more…
The federal government this year has ordered a probe into the crash reports of the car model Chevrolet Volt as part of a defect investigation into whether the car’s lithium ion batteries pose a fire risk after a wreck. General Motors engineers along with the government agency are trying to establish the grounds of a fire involving Chevy Volt that occurred in June.
Upon completing the side-impact testing post three weeks, the hybrid plug-in car caught fire. Chevrolet Volt caught fire while parked in the storage facility, the flames spread to three adjacent parked automobiles. Further the tests conducted during the week of Nov14 produced yet another spark, smoke and fire. N
Read more…