Does going Green affect your Car Insurance?

Many factors affect your car insurance premium like:

• Your Driving Habits
• Your Driving History: number of violations and accidents
• Your average yearly mileage
• Your number of claims filed
• Your neighborhood
• Your Credit Score

Insurance companies rate the risk of all of these factors and follow trends to set your premiums. A recent trend in the automotive industry is the introduction of green car or hybrids. Several types of automobiles are labeled green or hybrids. There are two types of combination hybrids series and parallel. The combination hybrid uses both a battery driven electric motor and a gas engine. The electric motor allows for a smaller, lighter more fuel efficient gas engine. In a parallel hybrid the electric and combustion motors both the transmission together. In a series hybrid, the combustion engine is only used to recharge the batteries, and the electric motor does all the work of driving the transmission. There are PEV's (plug in electrical vehicles like the Nissan leaf) that use battery as the only power source; not to mention automobiles developed around natural gas as the fuel source are available on the market.

Most green cars on the road today are combination hybrids (gas and battery). They average between 45 and 55 mpg. With today's volatile fuel prices that can add up to considerable savings at the pump, and the most popular models have good safety ratings. So does going green save you on car insurance? The answer is yes and no.

Many of the green cars are higher end, and higher price tag automobiles. The higher the initial cost of the car, the more expensive your car insurance. Don't lose heart if you want to go green to save the environment, or just to save money at the pump. Most automobile manufacturers are rolling more moderately priced green machines off the assembly line. While the sticker price is still a bit higher than their non-green models, the range of models is opening up. There are green versions now offered in most price ranges. You can now buy a mid priced 4 door sedan version that is not only limited to the luxury line. If you want to go green the mid to compact size models will save you on car insurance and at the pump.

Car insurance and winter driving

For example, did you prepare your vehicle for facing bad weather conditions? After all, it's predictable there will be snow and ice in winter. So did you fit new tires so you would have the maximum possible traction in slippery conditions? Or did you remember to put chains in the trunk so that, when the snow gets deeper, you can still drive reasonably safely? We all know the risk of sliding or skidding out of control. Why then do we fail to take action to protect ourselves and other road users? There are probably several reasons, not the least of which are that this means spending money on buying the chains, some think it inconvenient to fit them, and you cannot drive fast when you have them fitted. The fact local governments may require chains to be fitted as a condition to using the roads in some areas is not considered a reason for action (curiously, there are no chain laws in Florida and Missouri - strange oversight).

Then we come to all those routine maintenance tasks like adding antifreeze and retuning the engine so it's more likely to start when the temperature drops. Did you fit new blades on the windshield to give you better visibility when there's snow fall or a blizzard? And then we come to all the steps to protect you should your vehicle break down or be involved in an accident. Do you have an emergency bag packed with warm clothing and blankets should you need to keep warm while rescue comes? You did remember to charge your cell so you could call for help? If you are making a trip cross-country where signal strength may be low, did you tell people when you were expected so they could send out search and rescue teams?

All these things are basic common sense yet, when the first snows hit, we seem to have forgotten to prepare. If accidents are more likely because of this failure and it's shown to be a regular failure, your car insurance rates will rise. If you have been making claims, the car insurance quotes coming in from other insurers will not be welcoming. No insurer wants to take on someone who fails to prepare in the face of obvious dangers. That's why insurers in the states where the weather is worst offer discounts for drivers who go on defensive driving courses and learn how to drive more safely. Your choice!

Auto insurance and driverless vehicles

In the movie Minority Report, Stephen Spielberg has an extended sequence showing cars of the future being assembled and how they drive themselves. It's pleasing how well a film made some ten years ago has been predicting the future. The multitouch computer interfaces are here as are the retina scanners. Facial recognition software is routinely used at airports and other safety-critical locations, and we are now carrying pads around on which we can read the latest newspapers and books. Strangely enough, the driverless vehicles are also on our streets being tested. That might surprise you. Except the states of California and Nevada have already passed laws making it legal to have these vehicles drive you. So what's the problem?

In a sense, we have most of the technology already available off-the-shelf. Cameras can be fitted to give 360 degree vision. Radar can tell the vehicle when anything else is moving nearby. GPS transponders tell the vehicle exactly where it is. Computers can easily be configured to talk to each other so that each vehicle can be told when there's something else nearby on the road. We have voice recognition software which will allow owners to input the desired destination and route preferences. Many of the standard vehicles are already drive-by-wire, i.e. electronic rather than mechanical links to the accelerator, brakes, and so on. All we need are the software packages to interpret all this data and translate it into instructions for the vehicle. For the record, in March, Google announced that its driverless car has traveled over 200,000 miles on roads in all types of traffic conditions. There has not yet been an accident. Indeed, so confident is Google that it has begun discussions both with government and the insurance industry.

The theoretical advantages are enormous. A computer never takes its "eyes" off the road to answer a cell phone or comb its hair. It never drives too close to the vehicle in front. There's no reckless overtaking or speeding. If this technology was adopted across all our roads, the number and seriousness of traffic accidents would be significantly reduced. Given that more than 30,000 people are killed on our roads every year, this would be a major improvement. With the number of accidents falling, insurance costs would fall and premium rates could be reduced. Except we all know technology can break down. There's a world of difference between trusting the PC on your table at home to keep your personal information safe and allowing the same PC to drive you at 70 mph down a busy interstate.

It seems the discussions with the auto insurance industry have been going well because Google recently announced a more positive testing program for the software. Instead of this being ten or more years in the future, it has lost its speculative nature and could be approved in the next two or three years. The question for you as individual drivers is whether you will surrender your hands-on control to a computer in return for significant reductions in auto insurance rates. It's actually a very good deal and only dangerous if a few reckless people insist on continuing to drive themselves or it amuses hackers to take over vehicles and stage crashes.