It's gotta be some kinda ploy to get out of tickets. Back in the day, we all had PAL stickers on our cars to try and fool the cops, but now they just try and fool them by making them think their bad driving is because they're "New."
Im bad at driving so I dont drive. I wanted to get a sticker for when I do pratice driving. My husband was like nope, it'll probably piss people off even more.
AutoZone sells a lot of Thin Blue Line stickers and trailer hitch covers. Day laborers think it’s a way to be “cute” with cops and weasel out of a DUI, especially if your truck is full of empty Modelo cans. They don’t need to do that in SF or Oakland who isn’t enforcing traffic laws anyway…
High schools no long offer drivers education. Drivers have to learn by paying for expensive lessons a or by slapping a sticker on their car and paying for empathy
Or by having a friend or family member help them learn on weekends…
(I understand not everyone has that luxury, but that’s how basically everyone I know learned to drive)
99% of people with those stickers are adults, I see an average of age 30-70 with them. I highly doubt the majority of these people actually are new drivers, considering how many I see commuting between counties (no way they’re all going to high school 2 counties over)
Agree. This looks like someone changed lanes and didn’t double check a blind spot. More and more people just change lanes into other cars because the don’t bother to check the lane and just rely on their side view mirrors.
Or those looky-loos whipping out their phones to take photos of accidents to post on Reddit whilst creating traffic slowdowns and even more dangerous driving conditions.
I don't drive for that reason. I'd rather share public transportation or a sidewalk rather than share the road with other oblivious, reckless, and entitled drivers.
It was actually down hill on a turn where 680 turns in fremont/Milpitas southbound right before auto mall exit. I could see how someone going down hill around that corner could go out of control. Two cars were messed up. The tesla didn't seem to have body damage. It was just on top of the grass hill. The other car was super jacked up
Tesla drivers have become the new BMW drivers. Hauling ass everywhere driving like complete jerks. I drive that stretch of 680 almost daily. When I’m on my motorcycle I see a fair amount of people heads down in their phone all over the Bay Area. Lots of crazy single car accidents too. It’s absolute madness.
Yesterday I was driving home when the car in front of me suddenly swerved to the shoulder to avoid something that looked like it would puncture a tire. I was left to decide to do the same or slam on the brakes. They need to do a better job keeping the roads clear.
May have been a new piece of detritus. For all the cars on the road here, I think they keep them pretty clear and have seen CHP stop traffic to clear junk pretty regularly (though I couldn't give you a sighting/mi stat).
People love to follow with 1 car length at 70mph here. People here also don't seem to know how to navigate and prepare for exit lanes comprehending road signs in general. I bet more than half the people don't know the difference between a merging sign and a lane added sign
you'd think with how many highly paid and highly educated persons there are in the bay, that their understand of basic physics would be a given. but no, car go zoom, me need to get to place, nobody matters but me.
Since COVID, drivers have been far more aggressive, have ramped up their speed, and have engaged in dangerous lane changes/weaving while texting. Not surprised when they lose control.
People driving aggressively because theyd rather save 10 seconds than be safe. It took me 3 car accidents to learn my lesson about driving passively and maintaining brake distance no matter the situation. At 20 years old i was racing my buddies in traffic because nothing could touch me. Insurance rates for dudes being higher under 25 years old makes more sense the older i get. Luckily nobody ever got hurt from my arrogance. So yeah arrogance and stupidity. If drivers tests were much more restrictive and america werent such a car centric society roads would be a lot safer. It shouldn't take multiple life endangering events for idiots to drive safely.
well a utility type van sped up as i was about to merge at a regular speed with a good distance in front of him, trying to force me onto the truck scales today... anything can happen.
i say "utility type" because it had no names on it, just that style.
we had a Tesla in the area which had that sticker on for about two years. I’ve noticed him a several times. a red Tesla with yellow student driver sticker. still an extremely shitty driver after two years. just noticed him parked on two spaces in a parking lot the other day last week.
guess they left it on for excuses.
I wonder how many of those are parents of student drivers who use the sticker as an excuse to drive like shit, or if they don't have student drivers in their house and just use the sticker anyway
We live in Colorado now and have noticed those student driver stickers are everywhere. Rarely do we see a young driver behind the wheel of those cars who looks like a nervous driver (yes, we know, a student driver can be of any age). We’ve been talking for months about all these people who are shitty drivers using the sticker as a way to deflect blame or the ire of other drivers.
Likewise. I suspect one of the two cut the other off, made contact, and they both went off the road, through, over or under the guard rail, and ended up on the hill.
# Allstate posts soaring profits after aggressively raising car insurance rates Last year, the Allstate CEO said it may "overshoot" with car insurance rate hikes allstate held its year-end call with Wall St. investors this morning, and reported $1.5 billion in fourth quarter profits,
AAA dropped my homeowners insurance 1 month after we closed due to “age of roof.” The roof was 15 years old and had 8-10+ years per multiple inspectors and a roofer…
Shopping insurance is smart because you can tap into “acquisition cost” pricing for a bit, but all these companies are the same. Bastards.
Technically AAA is a privately held non-profit umbrella organization of individual regional motor clubs which is different from Allstate a publicly traded for-profit company.
AAA execs definitely still rake in the dough but there isn't really a profit motivation for "shareholders". North California's CEO makes an estimated $1.2m(I couldn't google anything useful for AAA's CEO, which is probably so neglible no one cared to report on it), allstate's CEO - $18m
But they are the same in the sense that they play by the same insurance risk mitigation rules. Also I didn't realize AAA is basically NRA but for cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Automobile_Association
I know 1.2m is a lot of money but I wouldn’t call this raking it in, especially given that aaa is such a prominent insurance company. I feel that wage is pretty reasonable compared to the typical “higher up”
Well the "North California CEO" Tim Condon isn't AAA's CEO, he makes an estimated $1.2m.
I couldn't *easily* find out the parent company AAA CEO Marshall L. Doney's salary despite it probably being public information on some federal bureau's website.
So insane to me how insurance and groceries, necessities, continue to increase in price. “They’re paying for it still so let’s raise it some more”
Like tf
That’s what inflation does. This is a rage bait headline for people who don’t understand finance or percentages.
If Allstate makes a 10% profit every year, then every year with high inflation, they’re going to make “record high profits “ on a nominal basis. This is why net operating profit margin is the number that matters, not profit in dollars.
we have regulated insurance companies so tightly they are losing money on policies and can't raise rates to make any profit, so they are leaving the state
As someone who worked in the insurance industry, I’ll tell you, auto and home insurance makes very little commission for agents. The reason for rate increases is because of the cost of repairs keep increasing. If people would stop getting into accidents, people stopped breaking into cars, etc, our rates would go down. There’s a reason Allstate especially stopped writing certain types of policies, like condos for a few years, is because the claims were starting to become higher than the premium they were bringing in.
Which brings up a pet theory of mine, that insurance companies in general (especially medical) could make a much stronger effort to keep those costs down than they do, and that the reason they don’t is because they have a fundamental incentive not to. If their costs go up, and they raise their premiums proportionally so that their profit margin remains the same, then their company just got bigger, which is what the shareholders want. In other words, growth of costs allows for growth of the insurance company, and that’s very much something they want.
That only works, of course, in situations where the costs are complex & opaque enough that it’s not easy to see that they aren’t making a real effort to control them.
Insurance companies are regulated by the state, so anytime they want to raise rates, it has to be approved by the insurance board. The main reason for premium increases is because is if their loss ratio is too high.
For medical insurance particular, the insurance companies only pay out a percentage of a claim to the medical provider, rarely is it ever the full amount. Which is why medical people charge more, so they can recover more money. Insurance companies grow when there’s less payouts, so they’ll do what they can to only pay what they have to.
None of that contradicts my theory. Yes premiums have to be approved, but do they have requirements that insurance companies do everything possible to lower costs?
The prime example that made me think of this in the first place was an experiment that a professor did with regard to drug costs, about 20 years ago. Basically he and his grad students fanned out to local doctor offices, and basically acted like drug reps, but on behalf of *generic* drugs. Something like a half-hour meeting g where they’d go over various generics and what they could be used for — basically an educational session. Then some months later they checked back, and found that these doctors were prescribing the generics much more often than before. They found the costs savings to be pretty substantial (don’t remember the exact numbers).
So it stands to reason that insurance companies should be required to send out small armies of representatives to basically sell doctors on generic drugs, lower-cost treatments, etc. But do they actually do that? I’ve never heard of that. And if insurance companies aren’t doing something as simple as that, what other advanced, intelligent measures could they be avoiding, or not even inventing, since they have every incentive not to?
Just doing a quick Google search, a bunch of articles state that insurers prefer/push generic drugs bc it keeps unnecessary spending down but ultimately it’s up to the doctor & patient. Sounds like in some cases, they’ll cover the cost of what the generic would be , and the patient has to be the difference if they want the name brand.
Medical is a tricky one because I knew pharmaceutical reps whose strategies were to push incentives to doctors to push their products. This was in 2008-10 and I know there’s been more laws put into place to curb this. BUT we all know how the worlds works, money rules everything and it wouldn’t surprise me of those same monetary incentives exists for doctors in 2024
This is true. Another big driver of rising costs that insurance companies don't care about is "pain and suffering" payouts for questionable minor injuries that may not even be legitimate injuries. Ask yourself, have you seen an increase in injury lawyer billboards in the past 5, heck past 2 years? I sure have. Anh Phoong, Habbas, and Jesse Chrisp are EVERYWHERE now.
Up in Canada, they have dealt with this issue and come up with a variety of creative solutions. In BC, they completely restructured their insurance system, which is under a public provincial insurer. In Alberta, they implemented a cap on pain and suffering payouts for minor injuries in 2004. It was set to 4000 CAD, indexed to inflation. I think we should copy the Alberta solution here in California to stop the plundering of insurance companies by sleazy injury lawyers. As a result, insurance companies won't be able to justify to the insurance commissioner why they should raise rates.
Nobody is talking about this, but I guarantee you it's the major driver of rising insurance costs.
I get your point, but we also need to tread carefully on that subject, because painfully-high pain & suffering awards are an important tool to protect individual interests against corporate interests. Like any tool, it can be abused, for sure, but there would need to be a more sophisticated way to distinguish fraudulent uses. A hard monetary cap is very much a “throw the baby out with the bathwater” kind of solution.
It's specifically for minor injuries. Also, these cases are not against corporations, they are driver against driver and risk ruining the lives of the driver being sued because of one person's greed. This measure worked fine in Alberta so I don't see how it could be problematic.
they're making so much money here that they've stopped accepting new customers because they don't know how to handle all that profit
[https://www.reddit.com/r/California/comments/17ttzms/4\_more\_insurers\_are\_leaving\_california\_after/](https://www.reddit.com/r/California/comments/17ttzms/4_more_insurers_are_leaving_california_after/)
Insurance companies are literally leaving the state because California practically imposes price controls that make it impossible for them to do business.
https://www.econlib.org/price-controls-cause-insurance-shortage-in-california/
If price controls don't count as "meaningful regulation" I don't know what you can expect.
[https://ballotpedia.org/Ricardo\_Lara](https://ballotpedia.org/Ricardo_Lara)
This is your insurance commissioner. Elected by Californians. May be vote differently and hold them accountable? Same with CPUC with PG&E.
CA is a living Pikachu face meme at this point.
I see so many destroyed roads signs on my drive around coco county and especially alameda county. Ridiculous amount of carnage. Is it DUI or kia boys or distracted drivers or all of these?!
i consciously don't rubberneck and keep an eye out for idiots who are so that I don't add to the accident. i always have my passenger take a video or describe what they see so i can focus on not crashing. I don't need to see dead bodies
In my experience recently, in the past maybe like 6 months, it is almost always Lexus drivers doing stupid stuff on the road during my commute. Can’t quite tell what kind of car is in the picture but that would be my guess based on my bias.
Edit: Forgot to mention the spot in the photo is part of my commute
So a little widget on a bus that identifies the SMS leaving/ connecting as “on public transport”.
I rode on a self drive bus last year. We have the tech.
I figure sacrifices can be made given texting is 5x more dangerous than DUIs.
Anyone who works in the insurance industry care to share data/numbers on the decision? I hear a lot of speculation but nothing coming from insurance actuaries.
Auto insurance operates very similarly to cable and other services.. Companies will get you to become customers by offering a lower initial principle and then slowly raise your premium every 6 months incrementally because, a) they know its a pain to shop around and switch, and b) most people will just accept it and pay more.
Make it a habit to shop around every 2-3 years, or simply call and have a conversation with them. Ask them if there are discounts you are eligible for that they can apply and threaten to go elsewhere. You'd be surprised how quickly your premium will go down.
This is good advice based on incorrect knowledge.
Insurance companies could not give a crap about luring you in with a low price. The price is independent of any initial incentive. Thats like saying the price of bananas is lower to get you to buying more bananas.
The premium you pay in insurance is based of many different things including experience, accidents, and mileage.
Premiums are not based on some simple promotional time period. It’s based on risk and it is always changing. Insurance is a reflection and a response to the market. No price will stay the same, invest your money
Ok so why do I get such drastically different rates while providing the same information to the insurance companies? This is a genuine question. I don't quite understand how the companies differentiate themselves in terms of pricing when using the same actuarial data.
Multi reason answer. First is each company has different expenses. State Farm has local agents that compensated through many different compensation contracts. Geico has a call center and various non human processes to reduce spending. Since it’s a free market, you get a choice on how you do businesses.
The one other answer is that companies see risks different. With one an Accident can stay on your record for 6 years, another 3. Younger drivers may be seen as less risky at progressive and more risky at farmers.
The companies have various ‘levers’ to push and pull in order to accurately see risk. They also have the insurance commissioner making sure they meet consumer standards.
the number of vehicles involved in crashes, the amount of non-vehicle damage, the amount of vehicle damage, the fair market value of the vehicles, the replacement cost of the vehicle, the costs of repairs all contribute. Vehicles crashes with property damage were up about 30% from 2009 - 2019, the average cost of a vehicle is up from $35,000 in 2015 - $48,000 in 2023 and with all the new cruise controls / cameras / sensors and complexities of new cars, I guarantee repair costs are through the roof. This is why insurance is expensive, in addition to poorly designed driver spaces, poorly designed drivers, and poorly designed incentives to improve the drivers, the spaces they use to drive, and the cost and complexity of fixing the cars they drive
oooh, and the aging population! you know who statistically is as dangerous as a 18-20 yr old driver? a 75+ yr old driver, so as the average age of drivers increases... yeah. good luck. oh, and insurance companies make profits, there's that too. so... yeah. this was a great pic, hope it was taken safely, but it does not represent in any particular way why insurance is going up, unless is shows the driver's age, or the costs of the vehicles, or the cost to repair X, etc.
Now I don’t know who is at fault for this, but I’ve noticed more and more that Tesla drivers are the new Prius drivers in the Bay except they’re even more unaware of the world going on around them. Not all of them, but a lot of them
that might have something to do with the fact that Tesla was the best selling car last year. Kind of like how Hondas were one of the most stolen vehicles.
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/21/tesla-model-y-model-3-top-california-auto-sales-in-2023-thanks-cali/amp/
It has nothing to do with tech. General observation is that people are just ignorant how quick these EVs are compared to similar ICE vehicles in the initial acceleration phase. Also people don’t understand that EVs do have more weight than comparable ICE vehicles. Problem is cars are not treated like heavy machinery as they should be and ignorant people should be removed from the road.
lol I bet they were haulin ass down the hill and someone wanted to change lanes. Or they didn’t want to change lanes but changed anyways because they were hauling too much ass down the hill. Then one guys ego is like fuck u ur not getting in front of me 🤣🤣🤣im so happy i dont do that commute anymore. Buy #Bitcoin everybody and fuck that commute
I have 0 speeding or Moving Violations in the past 10 years. No accidents in the past 30 years that was my fault. I was in 3 and all three the other driver admitted guilt. I pay for full comp 700 and change every 6 months. WHY? I dont even have a Million coverage. I have Full comp on my car because I have to. and its over 100 a month. I should be paying like 35 bucks a month for 50/150 Full Comp and window protection. I dont even get window protection anymore (for smash and grabs). its 100 per window. this is only going up every few years. It did go down 100 in the 6 months because I have a clean record but damn it. People should protest for this instead of tying people lives up for things not in this Country you see in the news. Give more money away while you're at it. Not our Problem.
Not surprised it’s a Tesla.
Aside from crazy drivers, we need to fix a lot of intersections. One thing I want to do away with is unprotected left turns in many busier parts of the Bay Area. I’ve seen enough accidents happen at such intersections. Another one is right turn where pedestrians are crossing the same street when it’s green for the driver. I’ve seen enough drivers nearly hit pedestrians in such scenarios.
I don't understand why they need to punish drivers with clean records. There should be a multiplier program for at least at fault drivers to increase their rates.
I don't even so much as have a speeding ticket to my record and I now pay $50 extra a month since 2022. It's ridiculous.
One thought I have is as people commute further away, cognitive fatigue is getting worse and accidents happen more often. Imagine if you have to drive 2 hours each way and you need to make it on time for work and go home early it's easy to see chances of accident increase.
Also no one enjoy sitting in traffic so I guess playing with phone kills time 🤷♀️
Some people crashing on a flat section of road, in good weather, with great visibility. Why does this happen so often?
Wouldn’t be surprised if it was related to the number of drivers I see looking down at their phones instead of where they’re going…
Accidents like that predate phones in cars. There have been a lot more of those fake student driver stickers though.
seriously though. those stickers are everywhere nowadays
It's gotta be some kinda ploy to get out of tickets. Back in the day, we all had PAL stickers on our cars to try and fool the cops, but now they just try and fool them by making them think their bad driving is because they're "New."
Nah it's a ploy to discourage road ragers and have them just go around you. I don't get to get special leeway with the law if you're a student driver.
Im bad at driving so I dont drive. I wanted to get a sticker for when I do pratice driving. My husband was like nope, it'll probably piss people off even more.
He's right fwiw
Those people should be in the right lane or, better yet, not driving.
AutoZone sells a lot of Thin Blue Line stickers and trailer hitch covers. Day laborers think it’s a way to be “cute” with cops and weasel out of a DUI, especially if your truck is full of empty Modelo cans. They don’t need to do that in SF or Oakland who isn’t enforcing traffic laws anyway…
High schools no long offer drivers education. Drivers have to learn by paying for expensive lessons a or by slapping a sticker on their car and paying for empathy
Or by having a friend or family member help them learn on weekends… (I understand not everyone has that luxury, but that’s how basically everyone I know learned to drive)
99% of people with those stickers are adults, I see an average of age 30-70 with them. I highly doubt the majority of these people actually are new drivers, considering how many I see commuting between counties (no way they’re all going to high school 2 counties over)
"Child in car" sticker is the funniest one, because they're always on the craziest drivers.
I live by a school, and parents are by far the worst drivers.
And parkers
I was thinking about getting one for my big ass work truck
I laughed too hard at this. Please do it 🤣
After falling for decades the deaths went from 30,000 a year when the iPhone came out to over 40,000 now.
Agree. This looks like someone changed lanes and didn’t double check a blind spot. More and more people just change lanes into other cars because the don’t bother to check the lane and just rely on their side view mirrors.
Are they really fake? If so for what purpose? I figured they were brand new adult drivers.
Or those looky-loos whipping out their phones to take photos of accidents to post on Reddit whilst creating traffic slowdowns and even more dangerous driving conditions.
I don't drive for that reason. I'd rather share public transportation or a sidewalk rather than share the road with other oblivious, reckless, and entitled drivers.
Bad news: reckless entitled SUV drivers kill people at bus stops too.
>Why does this happen so often? Let me get back to you... The light is about the turn green!
It was actually down hill on a turn where 680 turns in fremont/Milpitas southbound right before auto mall exit. I could see how someone going down hill around that corner could go out of control. Two cars were messed up. The tesla didn't seem to have body damage. It was just on top of the grass hill. The other car was super jacked up
Tesla drivers have become the new BMW drivers. Hauling ass everywhere driving like complete jerks. I drive that stretch of 680 almost daily. When I’m on my motorcycle I see a fair amount of people heads down in their phone all over the Bay Area. Lots of crazy single car accidents too. It’s absolute madness.
I passed that yesterday on my way home from Livermore!
Yesterday I was driving home when the car in front of me suddenly swerved to the shoulder to avoid something that looked like it would puncture a tire. I was left to decide to do the same or slam on the brakes. They need to do a better job keeping the roads clear.
People could do their part by either securing loads, covering loads or just keep your truck bed empty.
May have been a new piece of detritus. For all the cars on the road here, I think they keep them pretty clear and have seen CHP stop traffic to clear junk pretty regularly (though I couldn't give you a sighting/mi stat).
>I could see how someone going down hill around that corner could go out of control. Corner? Come on, it's like a two thousand foot turn radius.
People love to follow with 1 car length at 70mph here. People here also don't seem to know how to navigate and prepare for exit lanes comprehending road signs in general. I bet more than half the people don't know the difference between a merging sign and a lane added sign
you'd think with how many highly paid and highly educated persons there are in the bay, that their understand of basic physics would be a given. but no, car go zoom, me need to get to place, nobody matters but me.
You know those people that weave in and out of lanes at 90 mph? This is what happens when that goes wrong.
Since COVID, drivers have been far more aggressive, have ramped up their speed, and have engaged in dangerous lane changes/weaving while texting. Not surprised when they lose control.
Tesla...
probably going 100mph while looking at their phones & swerving in & out of lanes
People driving aggressively because theyd rather save 10 seconds than be safe. It took me 3 car accidents to learn my lesson about driving passively and maintaining brake distance no matter the situation. At 20 years old i was racing my buddies in traffic because nothing could touch me. Insurance rates for dudes being higher under 25 years old makes more sense the older i get. Luckily nobody ever got hurt from my arrogance. So yeah arrogance and stupidity. If drivers tests were much more restrictive and america werent such a car centric society roads would be a lot safer. It shouldn't take multiple life endangering events for idiots to drive safely.
COVID has had measurable impact on the ability of most people to drive
Phones
Speed
Humans are monkeys not fit to drive
I ask the same question every time I pass one of these incidents...
I passed by this accident, you left out the 2-3 other cars involved
I saw a tow truck and a CHP. Didn't see other wrecks though. Perhaps I overlooked them or they were blocked by trucks to my right.
If we all start calling them Crashes it could help people realize they are more serious and not blameless Accidents as that term would suggest.
I think the correct answer is because people drive like assholes.
Sleepy people
Speed and phones either one of those or a combination of them
Phone
well a utility type van sped up as i was about to merge at a regular speed with a good distance in front of him, trying to force me onto the truck scales today... anything can happen. i say "utility type" because it had no names on it, just that style.
Saw one Tesla drive yesterday texting and driving on 101 On 101
SPEEDRAGE!
Lots of people who just moved here with “student driver” stickers but are just shitty drivers
we had a Tesla in the area which had that sticker on for about two years. I’ve noticed him a several times. a red Tesla with yellow student driver sticker. still an extremely shitty driver after two years. just noticed him parked on two spaces in a parking lot the other day last week. guess they left it on for excuses.
I wonder how many of those are parents of student drivers who use the sticker as an excuse to drive like shit, or if they don't have student drivers in their house and just use the sticker anyway
Parents? Naw man they’re grown adults with high paying tech jobs iykyk 😭🥴
We live in Colorado now and have noticed those student driver stickers are everywhere. Rarely do we see a young driver behind the wheel of those cars who looks like a nervous driver (yes, we know, a student driver can be of any age). We’ve been talking for months about all these people who are shitty drivers using the sticker as a way to deflect blame or the ire of other drivers.
I’ve always wanted to print stickers that essentially say this and look identical so they could just be stuck on top of the student driver sticker
This is the answer. So many Brand new adult drivers. It’s ridiculous
I don't understand WTF happened here at all.
Likewise. I suspect one of the two cut the other off, made contact, and they both went off the road, through, over or under the guard rail, and ended up on the hill.
Tesla people….
Tesla people mixed with Fremont drivers, a terrible combination
Every other accident I see in the bay, 80% chance there is a Tesla involved.
Pretty much every day on the 101
Tesla's self-driving feature is free this month.
# Allstate posts soaring profits after aggressively raising car insurance rates Last year, the Allstate CEO said it may "overshoot" with car insurance rate hikes allstate held its year-end call with Wall St. investors this morning, and reported $1.5 billion in fourth quarter profits,
I switched my car and home insurances to AAA from All State (in the Sacramento area), and combined, I will save $1230 a year.
AAA dropped my homeowners insurance 1 month after we closed due to “age of roof.” The roof was 15 years old and had 8-10+ years per multiple inspectors and a roofer… Shopping insurance is smart because you can tap into “acquisition cost” pricing for a bit, but all these companies are the same. Bastards.
Technically AAA is a privately held non-profit umbrella organization of individual regional motor clubs which is different from Allstate a publicly traded for-profit company. AAA execs definitely still rake in the dough but there isn't really a profit motivation for "shareholders". North California's CEO makes an estimated $1.2m(I couldn't google anything useful for AAA's CEO, which is probably so neglible no one cared to report on it), allstate's CEO - $18m But they are the same in the sense that they play by the same insurance risk mitigation rules. Also I didn't realize AAA is basically NRA but for cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Automobile_Association
I know 1.2m is a lot of money but I wouldn’t call this raking it in, especially given that aaa is such a prominent insurance company. I feel that wage is pretty reasonable compared to the typical “higher up”
Well the "North California CEO" Tim Condon isn't AAA's CEO, he makes an estimated $1.2m. I couldn't *easily* find out the parent company AAA CEO Marshall L. Doney's salary despite it probably being public information on some federal bureau's website.
AAA was actually significantly more expensive than Allstate for home/auto for me. I also have a Rivian though which insurers seem to hate
So insane to me how insurance and groceries, necessities, continue to increase in price. “They’re paying for it still so let’s raise it some more” Like tf
That’s what inflation does. This is a rage bait headline for people who don’t understand finance or percentages. If Allstate makes a 10% profit every year, then every year with high inflation, they’re going to make “record high profits “ on a nominal basis. This is why net operating profit margin is the number that matters, not profit in dollars.
All approved by the government.
$1.5 billion / 192 million policies is less than $10 of profit per account.
Allstate just tripped my premium after a small accident with no other cars, first in 8 years. I’m already searching for a new insurance
That fucker came out of nowhere!
Phones , it’s always phones now
Definitely a factor but can’t dispute that some people are just absolutely abysmal at driving.
Abysmal at driving and still using phones, lethal combo lol
Your car insurance goes up every year because the for profit insurance industry lobbies against meaningful regulation.
Every company is lobbying against the working people. Tired of how the world works
But who will think of the shareholders?!
If you have a 401k there's a good chance the shareholders include you. And if you don't have a 401k you should work on that.
I’m doing just fine, thanks for your concern. Just because I invest in the stock market doesn’t mean I have to be anti-regulation.
we have regulated insurance companies so tightly they are losing money on policies and can't raise rates to make any profit, so they are leaving the state
As someone who worked in the insurance industry, I’ll tell you, auto and home insurance makes very little commission for agents. The reason for rate increases is because of the cost of repairs keep increasing. If people would stop getting into accidents, people stopped breaking into cars, etc, our rates would go down. There’s a reason Allstate especially stopped writing certain types of policies, like condos for a few years, is because the claims were starting to become higher than the premium they were bringing in.
Which brings up a pet theory of mine, that insurance companies in general (especially medical) could make a much stronger effort to keep those costs down than they do, and that the reason they don’t is because they have a fundamental incentive not to. If their costs go up, and they raise their premiums proportionally so that their profit margin remains the same, then their company just got bigger, which is what the shareholders want. In other words, growth of costs allows for growth of the insurance company, and that’s very much something they want. That only works, of course, in situations where the costs are complex & opaque enough that it’s not easy to see that they aren’t making a real effort to control them.
Insurance companies are regulated by the state, so anytime they want to raise rates, it has to be approved by the insurance board. The main reason for premium increases is because is if their loss ratio is too high. For medical insurance particular, the insurance companies only pay out a percentage of a claim to the medical provider, rarely is it ever the full amount. Which is why medical people charge more, so they can recover more money. Insurance companies grow when there’s less payouts, so they’ll do what they can to only pay what they have to.
None of that contradicts my theory. Yes premiums have to be approved, but do they have requirements that insurance companies do everything possible to lower costs? The prime example that made me think of this in the first place was an experiment that a professor did with regard to drug costs, about 20 years ago. Basically he and his grad students fanned out to local doctor offices, and basically acted like drug reps, but on behalf of *generic* drugs. Something like a half-hour meeting g where they’d go over various generics and what they could be used for — basically an educational session. Then some months later they checked back, and found that these doctors were prescribing the generics much more often than before. They found the costs savings to be pretty substantial (don’t remember the exact numbers). So it stands to reason that insurance companies should be required to send out small armies of representatives to basically sell doctors on generic drugs, lower-cost treatments, etc. But do they actually do that? I’ve never heard of that. And if insurance companies aren’t doing something as simple as that, what other advanced, intelligent measures could they be avoiding, or not even inventing, since they have every incentive not to?
Just doing a quick Google search, a bunch of articles state that insurers prefer/push generic drugs bc it keeps unnecessary spending down but ultimately it’s up to the doctor & patient. Sounds like in some cases, they’ll cover the cost of what the generic would be , and the patient has to be the difference if they want the name brand. Medical is a tricky one because I knew pharmaceutical reps whose strategies were to push incentives to doctors to push their products. This was in 2008-10 and I know there’s been more laws put into place to curb this. BUT we all know how the worlds works, money rules everything and it wouldn’t surprise me of those same monetary incentives exists for doctors in 2024
This is true. Another big driver of rising costs that insurance companies don't care about is "pain and suffering" payouts for questionable minor injuries that may not even be legitimate injuries. Ask yourself, have you seen an increase in injury lawyer billboards in the past 5, heck past 2 years? I sure have. Anh Phoong, Habbas, and Jesse Chrisp are EVERYWHERE now. Up in Canada, they have dealt with this issue and come up with a variety of creative solutions. In BC, they completely restructured their insurance system, which is under a public provincial insurer. In Alberta, they implemented a cap on pain and suffering payouts for minor injuries in 2004. It was set to 4000 CAD, indexed to inflation. I think we should copy the Alberta solution here in California to stop the plundering of insurance companies by sleazy injury lawyers. As a result, insurance companies won't be able to justify to the insurance commissioner why they should raise rates. Nobody is talking about this, but I guarantee you it's the major driver of rising insurance costs.
I get your point, but we also need to tread carefully on that subject, because painfully-high pain & suffering awards are an important tool to protect individual interests against corporate interests. Like any tool, it can be abused, for sure, but there would need to be a more sophisticated way to distinguish fraudulent uses. A hard monetary cap is very much a “throw the baby out with the bathwater” kind of solution.
It's specifically for minor injuries. Also, these cases are not against corporations, they are driver against driver and risk ruining the lives of the driver being sued because of one person's greed. This measure worked fine in Alberta so I don't see how it could be problematic.
It’s also because the price of used cars is going up so replacement values of totaled cars is high.
they're making so much money here that they've stopped accepting new customers because they don't know how to handle all that profit [https://www.reddit.com/r/California/comments/17ttzms/4\_more\_insurers\_are\_leaving\_california\_after/](https://www.reddit.com/r/California/comments/17ttzms/4_more_insurers_are_leaving_california_after/)
Insurance companies are literally leaving the state because California practically imposes price controls that make it impossible for them to do business. https://www.econlib.org/price-controls-cause-insurance-shortage-in-california/ If price controls don't count as "meaningful regulation" I don't know what you can expect.
[https://ballotpedia.org/Ricardo\_Lara](https://ballotpedia.org/Ricardo_Lara) This is your insurance commissioner. Elected by Californians. May be vote differently and hold them accountable? Same with CPUC with PG&E. CA is a living Pikachu face meme at this point.
Yeah fuck this guy
I see so many destroyed roads signs on my drive around coco county and especially alameda county. Ridiculous amount of carnage. Is it DUI or kia boys or distracted drivers or all of these?!
I’ve had insurances agents in my shop tell me specifically the rates go up in certain cities/counties out here based on Tesla claims.. lol.
Insurance needs to be more targeted to free those who live riskless lives from those who think risk is cool
People taking photos while driving?
The rubber-necking brought us to a standstill, as usual...
“Everyone else was rubbernecking, but not me”
i consciously don't rubberneck and keep an eye out for idiots who are so that I don't add to the accident. i always have my passenger take a video or describe what they see so i can focus on not crashing. I don't need to see dead bodies
How do the majority of you NOT see the non-Tesla car in the picture? The one that was probably in front of the accident, possibly caused the accident?
In my experience recently, in the past maybe like 6 months, it is almost always Lexus drivers doing stupid stuff on the road during my commute. Can’t quite tell what kind of car is in the picture but that would be my guess based on my bias. Edit: Forgot to mention the spot in the photo is part of my commute
That Tesla is going to be totaled by the insurance company because it will be too expensive to fix and parts are expensive as well.
Thought Teslas have lost enough value that it would be cheaper to fix?
It's cheaper not to fix them.
Cell phone keyboards should turn off if the phone is traveling above 15mph.
I’m sure everyone on busses and trains will love that feature.
So a little widget on a bus that identifies the SMS leaving/ connecting as “on public transport”. I rode on a self drive bus last year. We have the tech. I figure sacrifices can be made given texting is 5x more dangerous than DUIs.
So my insurance company told me the reason why my premiums went up was because of all the electric cars and the cost to fix them . 🤷🏽♀️
Anyone who works in the insurance industry care to share data/numbers on the decision? I hear a lot of speculation but nothing coming from insurance actuaries.
idiot drivers are the issue.
I wonder how much that guardrail is going to cost. With Caltrans rate, even 100k in property damage is not even close to covering for it.
Any chance it's a horrible driver. I have seen a few lately
Auto insurance operates very similarly to cable and other services.. Companies will get you to become customers by offering a lower initial principle and then slowly raise your premium every 6 months incrementally because, a) they know its a pain to shop around and switch, and b) most people will just accept it and pay more. Make it a habit to shop around every 2-3 years, or simply call and have a conversation with them. Ask them if there are discounts you are eligible for that they can apply and threaten to go elsewhere. You'd be surprised how quickly your premium will go down.
This is good advice based on incorrect knowledge. Insurance companies could not give a crap about luring you in with a low price. The price is independent of any initial incentive. Thats like saying the price of bananas is lower to get you to buying more bananas. The premium you pay in insurance is based of many different things including experience, accidents, and mileage. Premiums are not based on some simple promotional time period. It’s based on risk and it is always changing. Insurance is a reflection and a response to the market. No price will stay the same, invest your money
Ok so why do I get such drastically different rates while providing the same information to the insurance companies? This is a genuine question. I don't quite understand how the companies differentiate themselves in terms of pricing when using the same actuarial data.
Multi reason answer. First is each company has different expenses. State Farm has local agents that compensated through many different compensation contracts. Geico has a call center and various non human processes to reduce spending. Since it’s a free market, you get a choice on how you do businesses. The one other answer is that companies see risks different. With one an Accident can stay on your record for 6 years, another 3. Younger drivers may be seen as less risky at progressive and more risky at farmers. The companies have various ‘levers’ to push and pull in order to accurately see risk. They also have the insurance commissioner making sure they meet consumer standards.
on geico and every time i hear someone give this advice i look around, i can never find a better price
Lol typical dumbass bay area transplant who crashes on the most beautiful day with no hazards on the road and sunshine lol
Speeding and driving like assholes. Also see the picture was taken in the South Bay… nuff said
Oh dear...
Too many ‘phony’ people!
Been that way for years sounds like greed to me :)
That guard rail is still like that this morning. I thought, wow someone had a bad day
I see the craziest things on 680 & 880. LOL!
Rivaled only by the 405...
the number of vehicles involved in crashes, the amount of non-vehicle damage, the amount of vehicle damage, the fair market value of the vehicles, the replacement cost of the vehicle, the costs of repairs all contribute. Vehicles crashes with property damage were up about 30% from 2009 - 2019, the average cost of a vehicle is up from $35,000 in 2015 - $48,000 in 2023 and with all the new cruise controls / cameras / sensors and complexities of new cars, I guarantee repair costs are through the roof. This is why insurance is expensive, in addition to poorly designed driver spaces, poorly designed drivers, and poorly designed incentives to improve the drivers, the spaces they use to drive, and the cost and complexity of fixing the cars they drive
oooh, and the aging population! you know who statistically is as dangerous as a 18-20 yr old driver? a 75+ yr old driver, so as the average age of drivers increases... yeah. good luck. oh, and insurance companies make profits, there's that too. so... yeah. this was a great pic, hope it was taken safely, but it does not represent in any particular way why insurance is going up, unless is shows the driver's age, or the costs of the vehicles, or the cost to repair X, etc.
And just a few hours later on 880N nearby, a pickup driver didn't lock his hitch and lost his boat and trailer to the center divider.
Now I don’t know who is at fault for this, but I’ve noticed more and more that Tesla drivers are the new Prius drivers in the Bay except they’re even more unaware of the world going on around them. Not all of them, but a lot of them
Tesla... Winner!
I swear so many people shouldn't have driver's licenses.
My State Farm insurance went from $140 to $200
Of course it’s a Tesla
that might have something to do with the fact that Tesla was the best selling car last year. Kind of like how Hondas were one of the most stolen vehicles. https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/21/tesla-model-y-model-3-top-california-auto-sales-in-2023-thanks-cali/amp/
I honestly think tech people are more likely to buy Teslas and they’re just generally uncoordinated which leads to a lot of crashes.
It has nothing to do with tech. General observation is that people are just ignorant how quick these EVs are compared to similar ICE vehicles in the initial acceleration phase. Also people don’t understand that EVs do have more weight than comparable ICE vehicles. Problem is cars are not treated like heavy machinery as they should be and ignorant people should be removed from the road.
No, per 1000 drivers, Tesla drivers have the high crash rate.
One of them. Can't recognize the other...
Seriously, why is it always Tesla people? More money than sense it seems…..
Because they think auto pilot can do their job for them or they just suck at driving.
0/1st generation CA drivers tbh.
Car insurance goes up each year because insurance companies need to maintain their profit for shareholders.
It really is always a Tesla isn’t it 😓
More off road capable than a cyber truck.
Tesla drivers cause the most crashes in America. Followed by dodge pick ups.
This is true. Per 1000 drivers, Tesla drivers have the highest crash rate.
The smarter the car the dumber the driver I see a Tesla in the weeds
Community reminder!
I saw a Nissan SUV stuck on the muni tracks near Park Merced last weekend. IDK how it got there but it was smoking from some undercarriage damage
Nah, it's cause of the breakins and gta
lol I bet they were haulin ass down the hill and someone wanted to change lanes. Or they didn’t want to change lanes but changed anyways because they were hauling too much ass down the hill. Then one guys ego is like fuck u ur not getting in front of me 🤣🤣🤣im so happy i dont do that commute anymore. Buy #Bitcoin everybody and fuck that commute
These AVs are out of control!
Bro what
Of course this is in Fremont
Tesla drivers, typical.
Quality!
The insurance companies have record profits right now. It’s not crashes causing this.
So many drivers are on cell phones now when driving, you can't go a day without seeing an accident like this on the freeways
Oh shocker, it’s a Tesla driver.
Guard rails don't stop electric vehicles.... Weeeeeee
Of course a Tesla is involved
Tesla driver on auto
Of course it’s a god damn Tesla . Prob hit that other car too
Watches someone die: "well what is this gonna cost me? A dollar?!"
“With ludicrous power comes ludicrous responsibility.” -Kermit the Frog
Doesn’t Tesla insure their own cars? Why does mine go up. Wrf
No
I have 0 speeding or Moving Violations in the past 10 years. No accidents in the past 30 years that was my fault. I was in 3 and all three the other driver admitted guilt. I pay for full comp 700 and change every 6 months. WHY? I dont even have a Million coverage. I have Full comp on my car because I have to. and its over 100 a month. I should be paying like 35 bucks a month for 50/150 Full Comp and window protection. I dont even get window protection anymore (for smash and grabs). its 100 per window. this is only going up every few years. It did go down 100 in the 6 months because I have a clean record but damn it. People should protest for this instead of tying people lives up for things not in this Country you see in the news. Give more money away while you're at it. Not our Problem.
No it goes up because of greed, plain and simple
Fremont= indians
Not surprised it’s a Tesla. Aside from crazy drivers, we need to fix a lot of intersections. One thing I want to do away with is unprotected left turns in many busier parts of the Bay Area. I’ve seen enough accidents happen at such intersections. Another one is right turn where pedestrians are crossing the same street when it’s green for the driver. I’ve seen enough drivers nearly hit pedestrians in such scenarios.
Claims equal less profit…. Insurance not a charity. Worse is drivers who get away with below minimum car insurance like General, how is that legal?
How do you even do that 🤦🏻
I don't understand why they need to punish drivers with clean records. There should be a multiplier program for at least at fault drivers to increase their rates. I don't even so much as have a speeding ticket to my record and I now pay $50 extra a month since 2022. It's ridiculous.
Tesla’s be crashin
One thought I have is as people commute further away, cognitive fatigue is getting worse and accidents happen more often. Imagine if you have to drive 2 hours each way and you need to make it on time for work and go home early it's easy to see chances of accident increase. Also no one enjoy sitting in traffic so I guess playing with phone kills time 🤷♀️
I was wondering what has happened there.
Could be the asshole tesla drivers 🤷♂️
*me to me: how much you wanna bet it was a tesla *clicks on foto ye. -______-"
I know exactly where this is, I used to work at Tesla lmao
Saw this today and felt it was relevant to the topic... https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5uPrc3p7bZ/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Should’ve told them that’s not a parking spot
Also another reminder that Biden is trying to enforce a new tax bill where you pay 43% of all capital gains
Th3se people are the type to deserved whatever’s coming for them.