Hybrid Owners Drive More and Get More Tickets, Study Shows

by Warren Riddle on July 17, 2009 at 05:35 PM

Quality Planning, an insurance consultant firm, recently concluded a two-year study on the driving habits of approximately 350,000 automobile owners. It investigated driving tendencies and maintenance costs to determine the unique risks involved with insuring hybrids. Apparently, hybrid owners are ticket-prone, rich, and into marathon-style distances.

According to the survey, hybrid owners drive approximately 25-percent more miles (commute excluded) than gas-only vehicle owners. Incidentally, they also accumulate more traffic citations per 100,000 miles than their gas-guzzling counterparts. (Perhaps the hybrid owners are just trying to prove that their "green" cars have some muscle, too.) The results also indicated that, even though the cost differential is significantly narrowing, hybrids are still more expensive to maintain than other cars.

While the results of the study might not be overly surprising, the fact that some insurance carriers provide policy discounts for hybrid owners is significant. Some studies indicate that hybrids are now cheaper to own in the long term, but that may be offset by the elimination of insurance policy discounts and the increase of policy rates, thank you very much, Quality Planning. [From: Autoblog]

Tags: hybrid, insurance

Comments

FiremanJul 17th 2009 9:47PM

Neutral

Some things left out of this story are: It will cost millions to try to dispose of these cars because the cells in them are made out of toxic materials that cannot be recycled. So, what are they going to do with the waste? AND a big problem ::ask your local fire department, they will confirm this:: There is no protcol for putting out a vehicle fire that includes a hybrid or a totally electric car. Putting any kind of hose on this vehicle, including foam or any other fire retardant commonly used in such cases presently will FIRST...electrocute the fire fighter, THEN as the terminals short, the car will explode like a fragment car bomb in Iraq! Let it burn and clear out the entire area that the smoke will reach is the only procedure at this point. NOW...tell me again...what the HELL is the rush to GREEN for when GREEN is undefined and usually creates more problems than it solves?

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suckerJul 18th 2009 12:52PM

Neutral

I've always noticed that hybrid owners tend to be some of the pushiest drivers on the road, from cutting people off (which makes no sense with their low power cars), to insisting on passing semi's on the right in utterly stupid manuevers. And Fireman, you are so right, besides the batteries as well most people don't realize the utterly toxic and carbon releasing process that goes into making these hybrids, there's a study out there I'm sure anyone can find if they actually try, where they talk about how the building process for one actually in the long run makes it more toxic then a gas guzzling SUV.

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