Archive for the ‘Insurance’ Category

The stylish and delicate-looking front and rear bumper areas of most new vehicles are, just as they appear, damage-prone and expensive to fix, even from minor parking-lot-speed impacts. However the new 2010 Subaru Legacy fares well; in the latest round of bumper evaluations from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), it gets one of the best ratings yet.

The most impressive area of improvement was in the front full-width test, where the vehicle is run into a steel barrier that simulates another car bumper. In this, the 2010 Subaru Legacy sustained just $847 in damage, versus an estimated $4,049 for the previous 2007 Legacy...

Many police departments around the U.S. impound the cars of drivers caught behind the wheel without a license.

But starting Sunday, San Francisco plans to abolish that policy, calling it unfair to illegal immigrants.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, police chief George Gascón, and supervisor David Campos (himself a former illegal immigrant) all agree that impounding cars is particularly punitive for undocumented aliens, who are unable get licenses under California law.

Instead, police will give any license-less driver time to call a friend or relative to come drive the car away. The driver will still be cited for driving without a license, however, and...

We have some good news. Even last year's start of the recession wasn't enough to reverse the downward trend in auto theft. The number of registered vehicles in the U.S. has doubled over the past 20 years, yet the overall vehicle theft rate has fallen—12.7 percent just from 2007 to 2008.

According to the FBI, there were 956,846 motor-vehicle thefts in 2008, down significantly from 1,095,769 thefts in 2007 and 1,237,851 thefts in 2004. Thefts reached a peak in 1991, when a total of about 1.66 million vehicles were stolen.

Overall, the rate of vehicle thefts per 100,000 people has gone from 659 in 1991 to 315 today, and adjusted for the...