This has to be one of the best forums so far.
joeg

Owned many different muscle cars in my life, but must say even with what i would consider mid range hp in my car- it scare's me sometimes and thats a good thing! I drive safer and respect it.
joeg

Dan,

When the guy with the Corvette hit the wall, just what could the cops write him up for as he was on a race track. So far as I know there is no law against wrecking on a race track. Or was it just some kind of information ticket for insurance purposes?

Copied these pictures from the other site.




Ron :confused:

OldDog mentioned "the wrong attitude" and not lack of experience and training is the cause of Cobra accidents. Interesting, hope your doctor, lawyer, and dentist all have great "attitude."

I drove a truck to get through school and logged more driving miles before turning 21 than most do in a lifetime. Driving schools are no guarentee against Cobra accidents. However, they do teach what you don't know about car control. They also demonstrate what can happen when a car gets away from you and how to avoid that from happening. In Feb. this year I attended Boundurant's 3 day driving school and qualified for (and got) my SCCA regional. A great experience and I learned many things that improved my daily driving.

I suggest you offer lower rates for drivers w/no tickets and a high performance driving class and track this class of customer against the type of claim they submit. I would be very interested in the results.

Insurance guys are as bad as lawyers. Wording is everything.:D

does this fit here ?


http://www.clubcobra.com/forums/show...317#post765317

Interesting. It occurs to me that Insurance companies are in business to make money, just like any other company. As far as I can tell, insurance companies have been making an overall profit for quite some time. I would even imagine that their margins have been consistantly increasing as well. When did you last hear of an insurance company that went out of business because it wasn't making money?

And yet, whenever a single segment has the slightest upward trend change in payouts, alarms and whistles go off in all the land to signal the impending insurance premium increase/coverage denial apocolypse for that segment, irrespective of the percentage of business that segment commands, or whether or not the carrier is actually losing money in that segment. Insurance companies have gotten so good as getting the public to believe the "poor me" stories the insurance companies tell whenever their profits aren't quite as spectacular as they would like, the public tends to just shrug it's shoulders at the increases in premiums and coverage restrictions imposed on them, sometimes seemingly arbitrarily.

If the insurance companies would provide detailed information about their losses versus profits overall, plus within the specific segment where they want to increase premiums, the public might be more sympathetic to their situation. I have never seen an insurance company provide that kind of information. They tend to only provide the statistics they need to justify increases. What I am saying is, I believe insurance companies use selective statistics, not complete data, to justify the increases.

While it may be true within a certain context that they are "losing money" in a particular segment, the insurance industry, just like the airlines and other industries, tell the public it is losing money when in reality it just isn't making as much as it planned to, hoped to, or told it's board of directors it was going to make. It happens all the time. Companies quote statistics to "prove" their points, when the truth is, they simply are committing lies of omission by not stating all the true facts and figures.

Beware the insurance company that wants to raise your rates. It may not be giving you all of the information it has. If it is justified, so be it. With the way things are now, we will never really know.

All that being said, I see no reason why an insurance carrier would NOT insist that drivers of very high performance automobiles attend driving schools that teach the art of high performance driving. I have attended racing schools five different times, and I have gotten faster on the race track, and safer on the street, every time. They insist on recurrent flight training for aircraft pilots, why not driver training for sprts car "pilots"? I think we would all feel safer if we knew that the guy in the Porsche or Ferrari (or Cobra) in the next lane actually knew what he was doing...

He shouldn't be driving a Cobra if he can't see the traffic lights.
Maybe he needs a comp. windscreen.

You might want to read this
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...efer=insurance

I just wish cars were still $3000 new like in the 60's not a Cobra of course so I would not even worry today about comp & collision insurance which costs the most.. my annual insurance bill looks like the national budget.. damn the wife saw this post..there go the toys hello mo-ped.. The insurance companies are making record profits and probably the majority don't even want to take a chance on a Cobra, etc.. so if and when the statistics show an over whelming amount of accidents involving Cobras, etc then insurance will be damn near impossible to get for these types of cars regardless how old and senile you are.

Let's look at it this way. If you start a buissness, the idea is to make money. If you start a buisness with the intention to lose money you are about 5 cans short of a six pack. If you start a buisness that is diversified, I.E. a grocery store selling different types of goods, a party store with different types of products or an insurance company (different types of cars) and one of your products is not selling or it is costing you money, you are going to quit selling that product. With insurance companys, they will quit selling insurance for that type of car. Again, what Robbin was trying to say is that we need to control ourselves with our cars. This instance is with Cobras. If you go to other high performance auto forums you will run across the same issues. Personally I thank Robbin for bringing this to our attention. It does not take too many accidents with high doller autos to cause the insurance companys concern. I think a safe drivers course is a good idea. Although my Cobra has a lot less HP than a lot of others (350HP) it is quite enough for a car that is light weight. I don't think that insurance companys will lower the rates of people that take safe driver courses but if people take the courses then maybe their rates will not go up as much as people that do not take a safe driver course. We all have to control ourselves. We also do not need to make claims that are bogus. If we are at a track an lose control of our cars and wreck them, bite the bullet and fix it yourself. You are the one that screwed up, not the insurance company.

JMHO

Terry

Robbin,
I wasn't looking for a discount off my present rate for going to driving school, just the privilege of keeping the already low rate that I have now. Charge the drivers who haven't been to a high performance driving school (drivers who can show 1 (2?) or more years of claim free high performance driving should also get the low rates) a premium to encourage them to learn how to handle their cars.

BTW-For those who don't want to use their own cobras for training, there are several classes around the country that use FFR spec cars which should be a good substitute.

trs900-Maybe you don't have deer down there, but I wouldn't want to hit one of your aligators either!

Insurance recommendations
 

I'm not trying hijack the thread but, i'm ready to renew my insurance and have a request,,,refeerrals to companies who will do the following:
1. Agreed value
2. Milage limits of 3-5000 per year
3. No "show only restrictions", i'd like to run an errand, take to work once in a blue moon
4. the other normal perameters
I appreciate the help,
Jbo

Call the starter of this thread - Robbin at Midwest Classic Insurance. His rates are excellent, and he should be able to write the policy you seek. He's a good guy.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me...

seems like having higher deductibles for people in their first 2yrs of ownership would help. If you gave them a $10k deductible on at-fault accidents in the first year, and then maybe a $5k deductible in year two, then you'd probably solve most of your issues.

It wouldn't have to apply to theft and not-at-fault accidents, but it would cut your cost on the "problem drivers" without having to pass all the costs on to your responsible clients (by raising rates across the board).

just my $0.02

I love how many of you keep on talking about charging the new owners more and that is going to solve everything. The five cases that Robin posted did not support what you are saying, but I guess the facts don't matter. :eek:

Robin,

Of the five claims you mentioned, please tell us what engines were in these cars. I would love to hear the HP numbers, but I doubt you would have that data since you don't ask. So how about a simple big block verses small block answer.

Since facts are not real important and oppinions are freely spoken, I suspect most of these cars in the 5 claims exceeded 500 hp or were very near that mark. I'll go one further and guess the majority of these drivers would have told you all about how skilled they are at handling these cars.

You missed my point totally, so I guess I wasn't very clear.

A lack of training and experiance is not a problem when the person understands this and has the right attitude, as they will one: not try anything stupid on their own and two: seek training. It is the jackass that thinks he is above it, or doesn't need help, that has the big mocho attitude that scews up. Kind of like the guy with no legal training thinking he should represent himselt in a capital case.

However on the other end of the spectrum are the people who have the training and the experiance. They are damn good at what they are trained to do. However when they start believing they so good they no longer need to practice caution, they have a major ego or attitude problem at this point. They are just as likely to screw up as Mr. Mocho above, because they have the same attitude problem. And you can bet your bottom dolllar that when I detect this same attitude in a doctor, I look for another one with a realistict understanding of the world.

So back to the subject, anyone who thinks they can turn 500 hp loose on the streets in one of these cars, buring tires up in three gears and going over a 100 mph and that they are so good that they will never loose control, has an attitude problem and they may well kill someone. Then when they suggest that I should pay 10 times the insurance rate to cover their own a$$ when I have no intentions of driving like an idiot, it rubs me a little wrong.

I'm not suggesting that you pay 10 times more-i'm suggesting you shouldn't be allowed to own a Cobra untill you work your way up to it.Like a pilot starts out in a single engine plane VFR.Then IFR.Then multi engine.Then type rated.


Your whining is akin to a 23 year old complaining about being lumped in the "under 25 age group"-completely irrelevant to the subject at hand.