General Auto Insurance

Compulsory insurance tends to drive old cars from the highways

admin — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:52:43 +0000

Then, the article expatiates upon the dangers from the use of old and broken down cars, and represents (by accompanying illustrations and otherwise) that compulsory insurance tends to drive such cars from the highways. It is true that the cost of compulsory insurance does tend to exclude from the highways, old, used, cheap cars (whether broken down or not), since the owners of such cars are apt to be too poor to afford insurance, and thereby does tend to reduce the number of financially irresponsible motor vehicle owners. Find affordable general car insurance rates.

But it is begging the question to assume that it also reduces dangers or is the best way to exclude defective cars. Old cars, so excluded, though shabby, may be light, low- powered, in good running order and safe, and, consequently, far less dangerous than new, heavy and high-powered cars when out of order. Massachusetts experience does not indicate that the effect of compulsory insurance in the way of excluding old cars tends to reduce accidents. The best way to deal with the danger from defective cars is through public inspection. The public money that would have-to be spent to compel insurance might do far more for the prevention of dangers if expended for inspections and policing.

Car insurance quotes as low as $29?

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:50:59 +0000

Several estimates by members of the legal profession are cited to the effect that compulsory compensation insurance, assuring substantial relief to all victims of automobile accidents, regardless of fault, would cost only about $10 or $29 per car per year. Find cheap general auto insurance coverage. Such estimates, so presented, are calculated to make this project attractive to owners of motor vehicles in large cities, whose liability insurance is now costing them from $100 to $300 per year. But there are several “niggers in the wood-pile.”

Suppose that the average cost of compensation insurance per car were only $29, then, to be equitable and tolerable that cost would have to be “merit rated,” which would mean that the farmer, in the back districts, would be charged a premium of something less than $10 on his car, whereas the premium on a car used habitually in a large city, such as New York, would be somewhere around $200; and this premium for compensation insurance would be additional to a premium for liability insurance, which (unless the liability for compensation should be made “exclusive”) all financially responsible motor vehicle owners would still need to carry.

Moreover, an average cost of as low as $29 per car—let alone $10 per car—is a mere possibility, hardly a probability, and far, far away from a certainty. Manifestly members of the legal profession are not reliable estimators of insurance costs. Manifestly, also, the cost of compulsory insurance would depend (among other things) upon the scale of benefits; and if such scale should be made high enough reasonably to satisfy the victims and materially reduce liability litigation, the cost would soar far above any meager $29 per car. It is simply catering to ignorance to lead the public to expect high benefits from any such form of compulsory insurance at a low cost.

Compulsory compensation insurance debates

admin — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 20:49:08 +0000

The eminent jurists above referred to are in active practice, so active that it is a manifest impossibility for them to have given as much time and attention to the study of their subject as the foregoing statement implies. Compare cheap general auto insurance quotes online.

Moreover, their experience, although wide, has been in such lines that they were (and are) altogether unfamiliar with the practical operation of the workmen’s compensation law. Accordingly, when the project of compulsory compensation insurance was presented to them, persuasively, they did not stop to study it themselves but recommended it as a subject for investigation by a legislative commission.

An opinion highly derogatory to “compensation, regardless of fault,” for automobile accidents is entirely consistent with the highest regard for the jurists in question. In this connection it is significant that the New York Legislature deliberately refrained from acting in accordance with that recommendation.

Instead, it found more promise of good in two measures relative to responsibility for automobile accidents, one to adopt the New Hampshire automobile accident security law and the other to deny a driver’s license or automobile registration to any person against whom there may be of record, unstayed and unsatisfied, a judgment for damages resulting from an automobile accident. The second of these measures was passed by the Legislature but vetoed by the Governor on the ground, it is reported, that he deemed it too severe, in that it put no limit on the amount of the judgment which the judgment-debtor would have to satisfy or be forever barred from use of the highways.

In Massachusetts it is the “owner,” not the “driver,” who must be insured.

admin — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 20:48:32 +0000

It is asserted that under the Massachusetts law the insurance company may increase an automobile driver’s premium rate for bad experience, thereby implying that compulsory insurance under such a law exerts an influence for accident prevention. The truth is squarely to the contrary. In Massachusetts it is the “owner,” not the “driver,” who must be insured. Find cheap general car insurance in MA now.

And any company writing liability insurance must insure any owner who applies, at a rate fixed by the public authorities and which the company may not vary, unless good cause for refusal to insure at all can be shown to the public authorities—and the fact that the owner has had bad experience because of employing bad drivers has been held not to be a good cause for refusal. From the foregoing it is manifest that compulsory insurance, in the Massachusetts form at least, trammels “selection of risks,” and the development of “merit rating,” thereby exerting an influence exactly contrary to what this article implies. And the form of the Massachusetts law indicates that, for political reasons, compulsory insurance is incompatible with due “selection of risks” and fair “merit rating.”

It is stated that “Charles Evans Hughes, Henry W. Taft and other eminent jurists . . . met every Thursday afternoon from five to seven, for almost two years, to study the problem of how to help the blockaded courts keep up with their jobs,” and as a result requested Governor Smith, of New York, to appoint a commission to study the entire question of automobile compensation insurance, including with such request a “suggestion” to “apply the principle of the Workmen’s Compensation Law to compensation for injuries resulting from automobile accidents.” This statement does not depart widely from the facts; but when the facts are analyzed they are, as an argument for compulsory compensation insurance, far less persuasive than as above presented.

Is compulsory liability insurance making highways safer?

admin — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:46:04 +0000

It is asserted that about 53 per cent of the victims of automobile accidents are wage earners. But nothing is said of the fact that now wage earners injured in automobile accidents in the course of their employments are not restricted to seeking damages under the public liability law but are insured relief under the workmen’s compensation laws. Find cheap general auto insurance rates now.

To illustrate: In New York, in 1926, about 5,600 awards of compensation for automobile accidents were made to “employees.” And that is only one phase of the misrepresentation in this assertion. There is no authoritative basis for the estimate that 53 per cent of the injured in automobile accidents are wage earners.

Of the serious injuries in such accidents reported to the New York Bureau of Motor Vehicles, about 30 per cent of those classified are to children of fourteen years of age or under and about 15 per cent are to persons over fifty-five. With all due allowances, these figures indicate that not over 40 per cent of the seriously injured are “gainfully occupied.”

It is asserted that in Massachusetts, compulsory liability insurance is making highways safer; and the prejudiced statement of a Massachusetts public official is quoted to support that assertion. But the Massachusetts compulsory automobile liability insurance law took effect January 1, 1927, and according to figures reported by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States the results were as follows.

The number of people injured in automobile accidents increased from 25,331 in 1926 to 31,721 in 1927, and the number of fatalities increased from 681 in 1926 to 698 in 1927, in spite of a decrease for the same period of 9,316 in the number of motor vehicles registered. These figures may not prove that the Massachusetts law has bred carelessness; but they certainly do not indicate that it exerted any influence toward making highways safer.

Are you for or against mandatory car insurance?

admin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:43:02 +0000

It ignores the facts that both our trial practice and procedure and our liability law are archaic and that there are precedents for improvements in both which would relieve the courts and alleviate the hardships complained of without compulsory insurance. It ignores the fact that the congestion of our courts with automobile accident cases is due principally to “ambulance chasing,” which abuse compulsory insurance would tend to aggravate rather than to cure.

It ignores the fact that the Massachusetts compulsory liability insurance (which it extols) is increasing, not reducing, the volume of automobile litigation and, consequently, the congestion of the courts. And it ignores the fact that while compulsory compensation insurance might be enacted in a form that would relieve the existing courts, yet it might not (there being many conceivable forms of such insurance, some of which would have little or no such effect), whereas, on the other hand, it would surely create an enormously larger volume of novel litigation, in novel tribunals, for the harassment of the public.

Against our existing public liability law, which governs the right to recover damages for injuries in automobile accidents, it is charged: “You must prove the other fellow a veritable careless villain and yourself spotlessly blameless before you can collect a cent.” In so far as this assertion is true, it calls for amendment of the existing public liability law, rather than for compulsory automobile insurance. But, to a high degree, it is sensationally inaccurate. In order that the victim of an. automobile accident may recover damages, it is by no means necessary for him to prove that the “other fellow” was “a veritable careless villain.”

It is sufficient to prove that the accident was due solely to the fault, however slight, of the other fellow or his motor car. In a large proportion of cases of recovery the fault proved is so exceedingly slight as to be common to even the most careful drivers. And cases are not infrequent where judgments are recovered for faults that are purely imaginary.

Propaganda for mandatory car insurance

admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:41:13 +0000

That article follows the methods of old- fashioned patent medicine advertising. It paints conditions under existing laws and insurance practices in lurid colors, and then contrasts them with ideal conditions, which the reader is misled by statements and conclusions, probably presented in utmost good faith but which are essentially fictions and half-truths, to assume would result, as if by magic, from the adoption of compulsory insurance. Find cheap general car insurance coverage online.

Such presentations of the case for compulsory insurance have a wide appeal, since they suit the popular craving for novelty and sensations. To present the other side thus popularly is impossible, because contradiction entails a descent from the pleasing realms of fancy to the dry plane of facts and figures. But, since the field should not be abandoned to fictions altogether, the following analysis of some of the salient features in the article above cited is submitted for the benefit of those who seek to distinguish the real from the fanciful.

The article starts with an emotional description of the delays of our courts in disposing of automobile litigations and of the hardships of our law relative to liability for automobile accidents. That description is distorted and misleading because of what it ignores.

Compulsory car insurance cons and pros

admin — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:38:54 +0000

The purchaser of the $12 car—or even of the $500 car (bought at $10 a week)—-has learned no especial sense of obligation to the public at large. He doesn’t want insurance; he will resent paying for it. Having paid, isn’t he likely to feel, however unconsciously, that he is entitled to his money’s worth?

Isn’t the thought, “I should worry, I’m insured! ” likely to make him a little readier to take a chance? While his driving habits are being formed, isn’t the subtle thought that someone else will pay for his fun likely to have just the opposite effect from that engendered by the Connecticut law that he himself must help to pay?

Precisely that is the fear of many students of the problem. The demoralizing effect of fire and theft insurance on weak minds is notorious. Almost no one is as careful of insured cars, houses, jewels, as of uninsured property. And human nature does not change merely with the subject of insurance.

The primary use of insurance is to distribute unavoidable losses—lightning, conflagration, etc. In proportion as the loss becomes avoidable, insurance weakens the moral fiber. If a citizen who was overfond of his bootlegger’s wares were to seek a policy “protecting” him from the penalties of wife-beating, we can guess what the answer would be. Yet the difference between that and “protecting” a motorist when he is at fault is not a wide one.

Will compulsory insurance would result in a higher ratio of claims?

admin — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:38:41 +0000

Further it is certain that compulsory insurance would result in a far higher ratio of claims and lawsuits to accidents than is the case under present conditions. Find general auto insurance quotes online.

It is a well-known fact that the “ambulance chasers” are most active in bringing claims against those who are insured. False and fraudulent claims would spring up like mushrooms, and malingering after trifling injuries would take on the nature of a science. Rightful claimants, who otherwise would be satisfied with reasonable damages, would then, knowing liability to be assured up to certain limits, expect the limit and settle for 110 less without suit.

For obvious reasons, suits by wives against husbands and husbands against wives, by children against parents, parents against children, guests against their hosts, etc., would then be the rule rather than as now the exception. And juries, unquestionably, would give larger verdicts and decide doubtful questions of fact more generally in favor of claimants when they should know that the amount of their verdict would have to be met by a “wealthy” insurance company (which has collected premiums in advance for that very purpose), instead of by the defendant personally. Every lawyer knows that it is harder to get any verdict against a farmer or other person of modest means, from a jury of his neighbors, than it is to secure an exaggerated verdict against a distant- corporation.

General Auto Insurance Main

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:41:18 +0000

Customer Reviews: ★½☆☆☆

The General Insurance Company Satisfaction Survey – February 2012

Over 3,600 people took part in this satisfaction survey from May 2011 through February 2012.

Overall, how satisfied are you, with The General Insurance?

57% – Very Unsatisfied

30% – Somewhat Satisfied

13% – Satisfied

See What Customers Say about the General

Extremely Poor Service – Do NOT use them on February 13, 2012

“We switched to The General to save money on our car insurance. I was sadly disappointed in my service received. My car crash was in December 2011. It two weeks for my claim to even be submitted! First they said my car was repairable! It was taken to a body shop and the body shop owner said the car was totally un-repairable. It took another two weeks playing phone tag and not getting any progress. Ok now they have decided “yes” the car is totaled. I’m like having a heart attack with my rental cost. This is permanent general insurance company. Stay away. It ended up costing me thousands of dollars!!!” Anthony D., 2/13/2012

The General IS HORRRRIBLE on February 7, 2012

“This company is a rip/off! If you file a claim, do not expect a phone call for any reason what so ever just keep calling them back. The other persons insurance company helped me with any info needed. Also I had to get the ball rolling for everything while they did nothing! The company takes too long to process claims. It shouldn’t take 4 weeks.” Malcolm B., 2/7/2012

The General Sucks!!!on January 31, 2012

“I am going through the process of trying to get them to pay the claim for two vehicles that were damaged in hail/tornado storms that came through last month. My premiums are $498.26 and yes I had to pay that much to get the cars insured with them. They want me to submit witness statements from people I do not know to validate the timeframe of the storms that came through my home area. I complied six times, still not enough. Now they are giving me the run around and I have consulted with an attorney!Wish my luck.” Michael F., 1/31/2012