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Archive for the ‘Auto insurance’ Category

Well, it’s that time of year again. We’ve got Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November and we’ve no sooner recovered from that when Christmas is upon us. And for those still alive, there’s a further opportunity to celebrate come New Year. Indeed, statistics show we drink more over the next few weeks than at any other time during during the year. Sure, there are cookouts when a few friends come around and drink some beer, but this is the season of good cheer and, often, excessive alcohol consumption. So welcome to the developing world of social host liability. Let’s suppose it’s obvious one of your party guests is seriously intoxicated, but you continue to supply more alcohol and fail to stop this person attempting to drive home. Once on the highway, this driver is involved in a traffic accident and seriously injures other people.

Under the law of negligence, you are liable if it’s foreseeable a drunk may drive and injure a third party. This area of liability started off under the Dram Shop Acts that made bartenders liable if drunken customers injured people on the way home. Courts have extended the liability from commercial sellers to social hosts who give the alcohol away. Either way, the driver is allowed to leave and presents a high risk to the general public. Let’s start off in New Jersey where a social host served a guest thirteen drinks in a hour and allowed him to drive away. Minutes later, he was involved in a head-on collision. The host was held liable. In 1986, the New Jersey lawmakers reduced the liability a little. If the blood-alcohol content is below .15, the host is exempted from liability.

The experience in New Jersey represents a general pattern of the courts trying to extend the usual principles of negligence to social hosts and the lawmakers fighting back, as in California, Iowa, Minnesota and Oregon. But the common law continues to represent a general threat to social hosts who knowingly allow their guests to continue drinking and then drive away. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s start off in New Hampshire. The first question is whether the design standards in modern vehicles make annual safety checks unnecessary. If you said, “yes”, you are with the thirty states that do not require any safety checks. The theory seems to be responsible drivers maintain their vehicles and are not a hazard on the roads. If there’s an accident, they pay more for their insurance – it’s a stick and carrot approach to social responsibility except it forces up the premium rates for all drivers. In states where there are annual checks, vehicles are better maintained, there are fewer accidents, and drivers pay lower rates. New Hampshire has just decided to move from one to two-year inspections. Now there will be thousands more vehicles on the road with poor brakes and defective front ends. Guess what will happen to the premium rates.

In Mississippi, there’s a bill to enforce the mandate by requiring drivers to produce proof of insurance before the tax collector issues a tag. Governor Haley Barbour is currently considering whether the new database will be open to the police to check the status of all drivers. If he does sign this bill into law, it will potentially reduce everyone’s insurance premium rates. The more people are forced into paying for the basic minimum liability policy, the less the law-abiding people will pay.

In New Brunswick, the Insurance Board is refusing to release a report into whether local insurers have been overcharging drivers for the last seven years. The lawmakers established an arms-length board in 2004 but, for some reason, they are less than enthusiastic about forcing disclosure of this board’s investigation. In the meantime, New Brunswickers continue to pay higher than average premium rates. Read the rest of this entry »