Cars Safety Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Cars Safety - Essay Example Insurance companies sell their policies on the commitment towards "hassle-free claims". However, when approached in case of accidents, they take advantage of customers ignorance and get away with meager reimbursements. In that case a little knowledge and know-hows of insurance laws takes care of under-estimation of our loss in accidents. Most likely, the insurance company gives first party coverage, under which both properties are insured, and third party coverage, which covers other people and their property involved in car accidents with you. It is advisable to go through the policy papers thoroughly to understand the extent of cover-up of loss [1]. Regardless of your initial research, there will always be confusion and ignorance about certain rights, hence it is very important to follow the guidelines set by insurance firms (such as reporting to them about accident in a given set of time) and do some estimation of the loss incurred by you. This estimation will help get approximate picture of amount that should be covered by insurance company. Most people accept whatever the agents assert as the compensation money and do not give it a second thought. However, the insurance agents try to finalize the claim at a much less amount. Therefore, a prior working knowledge of insurance claims greatly helps towards the cause. And as a last minute advice, please do not give an autograph on any paper given by agents, without having complete account of what it means. Trust me; the signatures are not for a scrapbook entry. Be on the safer side, drive carefully. 2. Did you know that many car accidents are caused due to drivers playing with the radio while driving The next time you try doing multi-tasking while driving, keep the facts and statistics on car accident in mind: Every 12 minutes, one person dies because of a car accident. Every 14 seconds, a car accident results in an injured victim. So in order to ensure we are not the ones contributing towards such facts, it becomes important to follow some safety instructions that ensure safety of driver as well as the passengers travelling with driver. The driver is a responsible person since life of everyone sitting inside a car is in drivers hands. In every accident case, it comes to light that one or the other safety step was not taken/considered or even ignored in some extreme cases. Simple preventive measures like wearing seat belts, acknowledging speed limits and using horn/lights effectively go a long way in ensuring safe traveling experience. As an extreme step, car manufacturers should start installing features like computerized announcements to wear seat belts, the reason being the el evated extent of damage in accidents in which seat belt was not worn by drivers [2]. According to the car accident statistics released by the United States Department of Transportation's (USDOT's) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there were almost 43,000 deaths in 2002 because of car accidents, and the car accident fatalities for the year 2003 stand at 42,643 [2]. Not using safety belts increased the likelihood of injury by 119 percent for young women, 164 percent for middle-aged women and 187 percent for older women [3]. The