Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
Many drivers do not fully understand what huge impact car accidents have on the cost of their insurance. It is easy to understand why your own wrecks increase your rates, but harder to comprehend the correlation of the nation’s crash rate and insurance costs. What’s more, there are specific types of car accidents that happen more often than others and make the biggest impact on car insurance costs. Not only do your own accidents influence your car insurance rates, but those in the community around you, especially if they are one of these five specific types.
Five Most Common Types of Car Accidents in the United States
While the specific circumstances will vary, there are five different types of accidents that happen repeatedly in the United States. A large majority of these accidents are minor and end up in nothing more than a few dents and bruises. Unfortunately, a smaller percentage end tragically in a death or with serious and life-altering injury. Any accident can be deadly. The five most common types of car accidents are:
• Mechanical Failure – Brakes can fail, tires blow out, a number of things can happen to a car mechanically that cause an accident.
• Driving Under the Influence – Driving under the influence of any drug or alcohol reduces your cognitive abilities and reaction times making it easier to get into an accident.
• Distracted Driving – Texting or talking on a cell phone, talking with passengers, and tuning the radio or GPS are all things that take a driver’s attention from the road and cause accidents. It is the leading cause of teen deaths.
• Speeding – Driving over the speed limit reduces the time you have to correct your mistakes and react to others on the road. You also lose control more easily when speeding.
• Bad Weather Conditions – Driving in a tornado, blizzard or hurricane can be bad, but it can be equally as dangerous to drive across a flooded road or icy patch in the road.
Actuaries determine the cost of your insurance rates. They crunch the numbers on all kinds of factors in your area. Some of the strangest things go into the equation, such as color of the car and size of the tires. It doesn’t seem like those things would have anything to do with how much your insurance costs but it does. Other actors do not have anything to do with you. For example, the amount of accidents by other people in your area can cause your rates to rise.
Rates don’t stay the same. Sometimes your insurances rates can decrease. Insurance rates don’t always go up after an accident, either. This is especially true if the accident was minor or not your fault. It also makes a big difference if you do not have a history of such incidents. It is beneficial to do all you have in your power to keep your own rates down to counteract the influences you have no power over.