Research has shown that this safety feature is making a difference in reducing filings on policies.
The Honda Accord has just received a bit of a pat on the back from the auto insurance industry as new data has been released to show that its forward collision and lane departure warning system is helping to reduce the number of claims that are made in these luxury vehicles.
This data has been released with an analysis that was conducted by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI).
The results of the HLDI – an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety – analysis also showed that when it comes to auto insurance claims, the reality is even better than the predictions that have been made about the safety technology within previous studies. This research represents the first time that a crash avoidance system was studied in the real world in a non-luxury vehicle at a high volume.
Honda’s system showed that it was effective enough to reduce auto insurance claims by a meaningful percentage.
The claims that were made as a result of damage to other vehicles fell by a solid 14 percent. Moreover, the insurance claims that have to do with injuries to the occupants of the vehicles that are equipped with the collision warning system, dropped by an incredible 27 percent – more than a quarter of the claims of this nature. Claims related to other road user injuries fell by well over a third, at 40 percent.
According to the vice president of the HLDI, Matt Moore, “This was our first opportunity to study advanced crash avoidance technology on a high-volume vehicle, and the results are impressive.” He went on to add that while this remains only a warning system, “the claim frequency reductions are similar to what we saw earlier for systems with automatic braking.”
Other studies that have been conducted on forward collision warning systems that do not include the automatic breaking showed an auto insurance claim reduction that was less dramatic than this real world data has suggested. That said, none of the reductions in those studies provided statistically significant improvements.
