Many of you may not be college basketball fans, but it is a passion of mine. The start of the NCAA tourney is like Christmas as a child for me & my family! Last night’s game between Baylor & Gonzaga was not very competitive, but I watched every minute. Thankful for the opportunity to watch considering what happened to last years tourney. There are lots of Texas drivers on our fleet, even a few from Waco, so to those of you that are college hoops fans, Congrats to the Baylor Bears!
Like I said above, I watched almost all the tourney. Did not flip channels like normal, so I was inundated with commercials at every time-out. You know who advertises the most? Geico, Progressive, Liberty, State Farm, & Farmers! Every other commercial is either a Tag Team remix (love the dance), an emu, or a talking lizard. These companies have marketing budgets that are larger than most states GDP.
Ironically, I met with our insurance carrier last week as well to start negotiations on our renewal in June. Some of what we talked about is the normal stuff. Frequency of incidents, new safety features on trucks, etc., but nuclear verdicts and cell phone use came up in the conversation as well. We went back to look at our last few years of accidents, what they cost, & what the root cause was of most of these incidents. Here is what we found:
- Preventable accidents have incurred a cost of nearly $4M since 2017.
- Most of the accidents are not severe, but the overwhelming majority are rear-end incidents.
- Following too closely or distracted driving are almost always the root cause.
We are all busy & we love to stay connected with our friends & family, but the cell phone and its prevalence has contributed to this epidemic considerably. Just watch as you drive each day, see how many people are either talking on the phone in the car or even worse, texting while driving. For your safety & all off those you share the road with, please make sure you do not become one of these statistics!
If you don’t already have a forward-facing camera on your truck, I encourage you to invest in one. If you don’t have a headset or talk-to-text capabilities on your phone, please find an app that works for you.
Insurance is expensive, incidents and claims are even more expensive, but the value of your life & the public we share the roads with are priceless. Put your phone down & keep a safe following distance! We will all get where we need to be with proper planning and safe driving practices!
Be safe until next week!
Jay C.
4/2/21
