Reader question:
So, I know car insurance companies lower your premium if you have a safe car. But what kind of things should I be looking for when thinking about safety?
Joe
Great question, Joe.
There are several components of a safe car, and just one can get you a marginally lower price on your car insurance, but hitting them can save you a lot of money and protect your person as well. Because of this, it’s important to keep a lookout for these features and factors when your shopping for a new car or considering adding upgrades to your old car. Just a little bit of attention can go a long way.
- Protection against crashes. How do you know if a car rates well when it crashes? A good place to look is in the horse’s mouth itself. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is an organization that rates cars based on how they perform in collisions. You can go to their website to find the ratings.
- Compatibility with other vehicles. This is mostly a problem on vehicles like SUVs and trucks, because their bumpers are located higher up. This means that when they hit other vehicles, the main force hits them above the bumper and causes less destruction. Some pickups and SUVs are now being deigned with lower, safer bumpers.
- Rollovers. How well does a car stand up to a rollover? What kind of safety features does it include that help you avoid them? If you go to the safe car website, you’ll find cars rated based on their stability, which measures the vehicles width against its center of gravity to determine how it stands up (or falls down) in these situations.
- The roof-crush requirement. A lot of the deaths that occur in traffic accidents happen because the roof of the car collapses inward and crushes th driver or passenger. Newer cars must pass a roof crush test in order to see if their roof stands up in a collision.
- Blind spots. You want a vehicle that has as little blind spot as possible, because these can be dangerous. In vehicles like SUVs and trucks, where the blind spot tends to be greater, you might want to invest in a rearview camera to defeat the problem.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.