Fewer Car Accidents From Sheltering in Place Saved California $1B (sfgate.com) 90
An anonymous reader quotes SFGate:
The statewide order to shelter in place that went into effect on March 20 had a beneficial side-effect: Accidents, injuries and fatalities on California roadways were cut in half, saving the state and residents of California $1 billion, according to a UC Davis study.
In the 22 days after the shelter-in-place order (March 21-April 11), there was an average of 450 vehicle collisions per day throughout the state, according to the study conducted by the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis. During the same period in 2019, there were 1,128 collisions per day. In the 22 days prior to sheltering in place, there were 1,056 accidents per day...
"The reduction in numbers of all collisions, injury, and fatal collision was equivalent to a $40 million/day savings in costs and about $1 billion in savings since the Governor's order went into effect," the study concluded. The figures were calculated using Federal Highway Administration data, which includes savings from "property damage, treatment of injuries, lost time at work, emergency responses, insurance claims, and the equivalent cost of a life."
California has ordered some insurance companies to refund premiums paid in March and April for car accidents.
In the 22 days after the shelter-in-place order (March 21-April 11), there was an average of 450 vehicle collisions per day throughout the state, according to the study conducted by the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis. During the same period in 2019, there were 1,128 collisions per day. In the 22 days prior to sheltering in place, there were 1,056 accidents per day...
"The reduction in numbers of all collisions, injury, and fatal collision was equivalent to a $40 million/day savings in costs and about $1 billion in savings since the Governor's order went into effect," the study concluded. The figures were calculated using Federal Highway Administration data, which includes savings from "property damage, treatment of injuries, lost time at work, emergency responses, insurance claims, and the equivalent cost of a life."
California has ordered some insurance companies to refund premiums paid in March and April for car accidents.
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Given that now it's a lot easier to avoid some bozo to burst into the office and pretend he's the most important thing in the world... yeah, factoring in less time at work lost pushes that probably towards 1.5 billions.
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Nobody thinks this is a net benefit.
Just to put things in perspective, if California were an independent country, it'd have an annual GDP of $2.51 *trillion* -- about the same as India's. So over the 22 days they saved a billion dollars in accidents it normally would generate about $170 billion dollars of wealth.
The idea they saved a billion dollars in accidents over that period is entirely plausible, but it's not likely to be significant in the context of the whole economy.
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Nobody thinks this is a net benefit.
Time to add an appendix to the manifesto I'm working on, I see.
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More to the point is why people would have been driving - either work (e.g. generating GDP), or personal (quality of life). People drive because the risks involving in doing so - including hospital and repair costs - are weighed by them to be well less than the benefits from doing so.
Re:If you want to include lost time at work (Score:4, Insightful)
People drive because the risks involving in doing so - including hospital and repair costs - are weighed by them to be well less than the benefits from doing so.
While I take your point, I don't actually think this is literally true. People don't like to think about risks clearly enough to weigh them, and when they do they're usually not very good at it. People more often take cues from other people. They conflate "familiar" with "safe" and "unfamiliar" with "dangerous".
Re:If you want to include lost time at work (Score:4, Interesting)
They conflate "familiar" with "safe" and "unfamiliar" with "dangerous".
I have a co-worker who was paralyzed from a broken spine during a skydiving trip.
All his jumps were routine. His chutes blossomed perfectly.
He fell asleep at the wheel on the drive home.
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A more interesting way to frame it would be "number of lives saved", and/or number of injuries prevented.
There were 14,912 fewer accidents during the 22-day period of sheltering in place, as compared with the same period last year. Based on the numbers for California in 2018 (485866 reported crashes, 3898 deaths, 276823 injuries), there is about 1 death for every 124 reported crashes.
So the coronavirus lockdown may have prevented about 120 traffic fatalities (and prevented >8,000 injuries!) That's a lo
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They'll need that billion to give $$ to their illegal residents.
Who provide almost all the labor for a fifty billion dollar industry.
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While our citizens would rather collect a welfare check instead of doing the work immigrant workers do.
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Not that that's a choice any more under TANF, which replace old-school welfare in 1997.
Re: If you want to include lost time at work (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well while the situation now undoubtedly has many drawbacks, having less people travelling overall is a good thing, and many of the journeys people usually make are unnecessary.
If we can significantly reduce commuting by continuing to have people working from home then there are benefits all around, less pollution, less congestion, less crashes, reduced costs for employee and employer.
How many people commute to work every day while they're tired and stressed, and for the sole reason that their company insis
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Permenently Restrict Driving... (Score:1)
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Great idea, Mr. Stalin! Keep up the good work!
Re:Permenently Restrict Driving... (Score:4, Funny)
I'll cue the music. [youtube.com]
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Sooner or later: mandate robot drivers. If all the drivers on the road were robotic, you immediately cut out most of the 50% of accidents caused by alcohol impairment, the 25% of accidents caused by excessive speed, the 9% of accidents involving distracted drivers, and the 7% of accidents involving sleepy drivers.
You replace those old accidents with accidents caused by programming errors, sensor glitches, and mechanical failures.
Eventually that'll be a no-brainer. If it's not already. It would certainly
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Eventually that'll be a no-brainer. If it's not already. It would certainly be easier to program a robot driver if it didn't have to take human unpredictability into account.
As an engineering problem the answer is obvious. Centralized traffic control of varying levels based on density to the 'robot' driver. You get within a metropolitan area, you start a guided level of traffic control, the robot requests a route to a destination and central system provides you with 2-3 optimum routes, the robot then makes choices based on your private personal choices. More density bumps it up a level, such as a parking garage, where the central system prescribes exactly where the vehicle is t
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That's the one approach that actually make sense, so we can rest assured that will never happen.
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Mod parent up, I don't know why I've never heard about such integration before. It's brilliant in its simplicity.
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I'm picturing enhanced slot-cars. Anyone else?
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Eventually that'll be a no-brainer. If it's not already. It would certainly be easier to program a robot driver if it didn't have to take human unpredictability into account.
As an engineering problem the answer is obvious. Centralized traffic control of varying levels based on density to the 'robot' driver. You get within a metropolitan area, you start a guided level of traffic control, the robot requests a route to a destination and central system provides you with 2-3 optimum routes, the robot then makes choices based on your private personal choices. More density bumps it up a level, such as a parking garage, where the central system prescribes exactly where the vehicle is to go and it automatically goes. No one has to give up freedom, privacy, or choice. Accident risk drops to near nothing.
...and then you could rationalise this system with larger capacity vehicles that are more efficient & reduce congestion at peak times. Perhaps vehicles that run in dedicated lanes of the road, e.g. on rails or maglev? And you could integrate the various routes, departure & arrival times, etc., so that you have an integrated public transport system...
And to make it really efficient, you could change the way you do urban planning, i.e. change laws to require integrated communities with schools, superm
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It's interesting how Americans are OK with many thousands of people dying in car crashes every year due almost entirely to human driver error, but then a driverless car kills one jaywalker and people declare driverless cars too unsafe to operate on public roads.
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You replace those old accidents with accidents caused by programming errors, sensor glitches, and mechanical failures.
Which are great, because those are all engineering problems that we can solve. Fixing human behavior has proved time and time again to be nearly impossible.
You spitball a bunch of numbers for what causes accidents, but miss a big one: Unsafe following distance. Humans just can't figure that out. Robots will do excellent with this, both maintaining as necessary and being able to need less of it if there's a vehicle communication network so that there's situational awareness.
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The effect on vehicle repair shops (Score:1)
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The Broken window theory assumes a shopkeeper (Score:2)
I'm not saying we bust windows to make jobs, but we need to realize that money saved in this day and age doesn't get plowed back into the community. Underpaid employees just us
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Far from investing in the community they siphon off profits
The profits go to shareholders, which mostly means middle-class pension funds. Those people live in communities and spend their money there.
Why is it important that the individual dollar you spend is returned to your community rather than a different dollar?
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The profits go to shareholders, which mostly means middle-class pension funds.
Haven't we already had this conversation when you previously posted this? 84% of all stocks owned by Americans are owned by the wealthiest 10% of the households. More than 50% of Americans don't own any stock, even with pension plans, IRAs, 401ks, 529 plans and everything, So why should we risk lives to further pad the portfolios of the 10%? So the 90% that own the remaining 16% of stock can get trickled on?
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To be in the top 10% you just have to be better off than 9/10 of your neighbors. The cut off is a household income of $110k, so two spouses earning $55k each. That isn't "wealthy" and certainly isn't enough to afford a private island that is isolated from "communities".
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Can you provide a source for your numbers? This source [dqydj.com] says the 10% number for household income was $184,200 in 2019. However, income is irrelevant, my "84% of all stocks" statistic was for wealth. Top 10% of wealth in the US is around a $1.2M net worth Heck, 50% of the stock is owned by the 1% (net worth > $10M) [source] [yahoo.com], that would seem to refute your assertion that most of stocks are held by pension funds.
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"property damage, treatment of injuries, lost time at work, emergency responses, insurance claims, and the equivalent cost of a life."
Repair shops is probably not the biggest thing on the list.
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This. Money is never lost. It's just with someone else.
So 1 billion less money lost means that someone didn't make one billion.
Re:The effect on vehicle repair shops (Score:5, Insightful)
That $1B effects are felt by repair shops
This is a zero-sum fallacy.
If people spend less at repair shops, they have more money to spend on other things.
So if your car is damaged and you spend $100 to fix it, the mechanic makes $100.
If your cars is NOT damaged, and you spend $100 on new shoes for your kids, then the cobbler makes $100.
The difference is that in the 1st case you are no better off. But in the 2nd case, your kids have new shoes.
Auto accidents, like broken windows, do not create jobs and are not "good for the economy".
Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org]
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That $1B effects are felt by repair shops
This is a zero-sum fallacy.
The effect may not necessarily be zero-sum in a exact compensating sense. However, there are winners and losers. Repair shops are losers. Insurance companies are winners because they pay less money to the repair shops. Gas stations and companies in the gasoline pipeline are losers (like the fracking companies going out of business). States are losers in that they will collect much less in gas tax money, which will result in less money for road repairs and maintenance. Restaurants are losers.
There are
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"there are winners and losers"
In actual capitalism there is no requirement for someone to lose in an economic transaction. Due to productivity it is completely reasonable for both parties to benefit.
"There are very few (maybe zero) changes in the economy that don't result in winners and losers."
Why do you hate capitalism?
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"there are winners and losers"
In actual capitalism there is no requirement for someone to lose in an economic transaction. Due to productivity it is completely reasonable for both parties to benefit.
"There are very few (maybe zero) changes in the economy that don't result in winners and losers."
Why do you hate capitalism?
Curious, why do you think I hate capitalism? It's quite clear that many market transactions and short-term market movements and trends have winners and losers. Capitalism cannot work with that. The hope is that longer-term macro effects will be beneficial for society and most people. A belief that all capitalistic transactions are beneficial for all involved parties is utopian.
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"Curious, why do you think I hate capitalism? "
Because you keep coming back with this zero-sum mercantilist bullshit that bears no relation to the world around you. If you by a loaf from a baker, have you impoverished him? Or he you? It is absurd to suggest it! For if it impoverished the baker he would not sell it, or if you not buy it. But by buying the loaf you are better off because you could not eat the coin, and the baker better off because he can pay those who have already have their fill of bread.
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"Curious, why do you think I hate capitalism? "
Because you keep coming back with this zero-sum mercantilist bullshit that bears no relation to the world around you. If you by a loaf from a baker, have you impoverished him? Or he you? It is absurd to suggest it! For if it impoverished the baker he would not sell it, or if you not buy it. But by buying the loaf you are better off because you could not eat the coin, and the baker better off because he can pay those who have already have their fill of bread.
It's quite obvious that many instances of non-mutually beneficial transactions occur all the time. Sometimes, fraud happens. Sometimes, one party takes advantage of another. Sometimes buying something means not having enough money to buy something more important. Sometimes buying something means others won't be able to buy that item that they need more. Sometimes what we call capitalism is missing true supply-demand market forces, such as what happens during panic buying or what happens when consumers
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The median businessman has no idea how capitalism works. At the 90th percentile, they are actively opposed.
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The other difference is that the car mechanic makes $100 locally.
Because "the cobbler" today is a sweatshop in China, so your $100 leave the national economy and that's it. Your kids have new shoes, end of story.
But money that stays within the local economy can go around many times. It could even come back to you. If you're the local baker, the car mechanic could buy some flowers and the florist some ice cream and the ice cream guy comes to your shop to buy bread. And then you go and buy shoes for your kids
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so your $100 leave the national economy and that's it.
Right, because when the Chinese get all those American dollars they put them in a big pile and burn them.
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Essentially, yes - from a national economy position. The US imports almost five times as much from China as the other way around (https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html) and the main stuff China imports is machines, oil and raw materials.
Statistically speaking, of that $100 only $20 will in one way or the other return to the US. And it will be a longer way as the sweatshop workers are unlikely to buy a few barrels of crude oil or a missile guidance system.
I'm not against trade. I'm just say
There, Fixed that for ya! (Score:2)
"California has ordered some insurance companies to refund premiums paid in March and April for the lack of car accidents."
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"California has ordered some insurance companies to refund premiums paid in March and April for the lack of car accidents."
This hostile micromanagement of the insurance industry is one reason California's insurance rates are so high.
Car insurance rates by state [bankrate.com]
Let's say the opposite occurred, and there was an "act of God" that increased insurance payouts, such as a huge hailstorm. Would California require policyholders to pay extra? Of course not. So if there are downside risks for the insurance companies, but no upside benefits, premiums will be higher.
Re:There, Fixed that for ya! (Score:4, Informative)
It's not the reductions in accidents itself, it's the large reduction in risk. A car parked in the driveway because you're obeying a stay home order is not at risk of a traffic accident when it normally would be.
If something happened that greatly increased the risk of auto accidents, insurers would be permitted to increase their rates.
The heavy traffic and driving everywhere in Ca. is why the rates are higher there.
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If something happened that greatly increased the risk of auto accidents, insurers would be permitted to increase their rates.
Perhaps on renewals, but not on current policies.
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So you guess conveniently...
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Car insurance is expensive in California because people have fancy cars, expensive properties and good lawyers. That said, the $300/year my car insurance costs me as a Californian isn't a major burden.
Many insurance companies do that automatically (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of insurance companies automatically return any excess to policyholders. State Farm, any company with "mutual" in the name, and many others are owned by the policyholders. Like a credit union, cash in excess of expenses and reserve is returned to their members/policy holders.
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But they use Hollywood style accounting to make sure there are officially no profits at the end of the year, even if they are swimming in money. Hence premium refunds almost never happen.
So that the owners can keep the money? (Score:2)
Oh they do, eh? Is that so that the owners / stockholders can keep all the money?
Oh wait, the policyholders ARE the owners. You think that the owners try to screw themselves over. Pro tip - just because an idea pops into your head doesn't make it fact.
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State Farm flat out admits to never paying dividends: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blo... [nerdwallet.com]
So kiss my ass, buttfucker.
This year, last year, the year before ... (Score:2)
> State Farm flat out admits to never paying dividends
> So kiss my ass, buttfucker.
That's funny that they never" do, considering they paid dividends in 2020:
https://newsroom.statefarm.com... [statefarm.com]
In 2019:
https://newsroom.statefarm.com... [statefarm.com]
2018:
https://newsroom.statefarm.com... [statefarm.com]
Also 2017, you can guess the link.
Some years they adjust reduce pricing. Some years, they got the pricing right at the beginning of the year, so there is no need to pay back dividends at the end of the year. That is, there isn't
The economic cost of the shelter-in-place order... (Score:1)
Lets suppose that the economic cost is _not_ 100% of the GDP of the state of California for that period. Lets assume that the economic cost is 25% to shelter-in-place.
Then, the GDP of California for the 3rd quarter of 2017 (first number that appeared on Google) was 2.75 trillion dollars. For three months. 90 days. Lets round down, we get about 30 billion dollars _per_day_, and this crash-savings measurement was over about 20 days.
So, shelter-in-place saved 1 billion dollars, and cost a mere 25% of 650 billi
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Yes, NO OTHER EFFECT was caused by wasting those 650 billion dollars. No other variable was at all affected by people sitting at home, solely the number of car accidents. Furthermore lives lost cause no emotions, good or bad, and can efficiently be depicted as numerical values.
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There are also thousands fewer strokes, fewer blood poisonings, lower crime rate, etc.
OTH, probably *much* lower ticket revenue which will hurt government budgets who depend on ticket revenue.
Also.. cars will last longer which will lower car sales for a while.
And thousands of people are *not* dying to breathing problems.
Many people seem to have taken up sewing, crafting, cooking and these will have long term effects on business.
Many people have had a shock to their fake sense of safety built on the Fed "put
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Nope.
They've already addressed that.
86% die *from* covid19.
14% die 'with" covid19.
I'm sure what you are saying happens at some level but the much larger share seems to be people who die from covid19 without being tested.
I don't get it (Score:2)
As a foreigner, how does the state profit from non-accidents?
If somebody has an accident he or his insurance pays for the damage, no?
Or is this if somebody with no or a shabby insurance hits a critical spot where he makes millions of damage that he never can pay back or what?
Or is it that thousands of non-insured people turn up in emergency rooms after accidents?
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California operates a lot of state vehicles.
I don't have the figures for California-- but it is 1/3 of the countries population.
Here is the country.
"The federal government owns or leases 254,059 vehicles, excluding the military and Postal Service. Thatâ(TM)s a 20 percent increase over the past decade.
The number of vehicles owned or leased by the federal government has grown by 20 percent over the past decade â" to 254,059 in 2011. And thatâ(TM)s not even accounting for the governmentâ(TM
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an anonymous poster points out California is 39 mil, not 80 mil (as I had misremembered) so adjusting the swag... they probably have about 30,000 vehicles.
So i found a 2015 source...
https://data.ca.gov/dataset/ca... [ca.gov]
Looks like they owned 210,771 vehicles in 2015.
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They don't, the net effect of the lockdown has been a unique disaster. This is just the usual /. bullshit article.
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Police, fire, road clean-up, state vehicles, etc.
But in this case, they're also counting losses to residents of the state as well as the costs to the state government.
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Besides emergency response there's also court costs and such.
Everything in which the state involves itself incurs a cost to the state, because we live under capitalism.
Money back (Score:2)
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State farm and Allstate are doing this in Texas and my savings will be about $65.
lost time at work (Score:2)
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Counting "lost time at work" is not really a saving, since the cause of the accident reductions is lost time at work.
Nope. I'm getting work done more efficiently now I'm working from home full time. Up front investment in converting the shed to an office so I'm out of the house and away from family while working, but now that's done, I'm away from both home and office and that means I can code and write with considerably less distraction and a bigger monitor.
I hope it stays this way (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be great if companies kept people working from home, I know traffic will increase after this is over, but I don't need to go into work. Think of all the gas we'd save, think of all the pollution that would go away.
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I don't need to go into work. Think of all the gas we'd save, think of all the pollution that would go away.
Be careful what you wish for. A job that can be done from home is a job that can be done from Mumbai.
Re:I hope it stays this way (Score:4, Interesting)
If somebody in Mumbai can do your job better than you do, you should get better at your job. Lots of us, especially in the software field, have been competing in a world-wide market for decades.
Americans are Crazy Drivers (Score:2)
We had a holiday to the states/California last year. Some observations.
- You have an insane volume of traffic, especially up in the san fran area.
- There was lots of speeding on freeways, especially by larger vehicles like F350s
- Saw very little enforcement. In fact we were at the mirimax airshow and I had a chat with CHP, and the cop there even said, yeh, theres not as many of as you think, we don't get much actual highway enforcement time because we are busy doing other stuff, we all drive a bit fast, the
Another view (Score:1)
80 in 35 (Score:1)
I can see it now... (Score:1)
COVID-19 saved california biz $100 billion in wage (Score:1)
um (Score:2)
Talk about learning the opposite lesson.
Yes, you could eliminate all auto accidents by eliminating driving. We don't, because we balance risk and reward, we make trade offs, we recognize that just doing the ham-fisted thing is not cost free, not even in lives.
right they saved money and lives...BULLSHIT (Score:2)
tens of billions of dollars in lost business, people thrown into poverty and substance abuse, businesses permanently destroyed...
oh, and 700 a month normally die in auto accidents, now they have a thousand dead in last month from the virus....yay?
Huh? Return premiums? WTF? (Score:2)
I bet the insurance companies would love to be allowed to legally retroactively adjust premiums. Less accidents, you get a refund on you car insurance. More deaths due to Covid-19, you now owe extra premium for past months for your life insurance, oh and health insurance too. An earthquake or natural disaster, everyone has to pay extra premiums for last month to cover the earthquake that just happened. California seems to be playing right into the insurance companies interests.
Such an ability to retroactive
Only in _half_ ?! (Score:2)
Seriously expected an eighth or less.
Conclusion: those driving are doing so much more recklessly than usual ... ie. the idiots have the roads to themselves and are proving they're idiots.