R&R Insurance Blog

Who is responsible for the cost of an accident when there is a multi-car pile-up?
Normally, when a car hits the vehicle ahead of them, the car behind would be held liable. The automatic assumption is that the car travelling behind must stay a safe braking distance behind the car in front.

Multi-car crashes are a different story. They can be complex because it’s often very difficult to establish “who did what” – unlike a single vehicle accident, or a one-car crash. Law enforcement will take details of each and every car, position, driver and weather conditions. Common questions law enforcement will consider are:

• Whose negligent actions set off the chain reaction?
• Were other drivers speeding or driving too close?

The police report will usually cite which car is at fault as it examines and explains how the accident occurred. Most often it is one car that started the chain reaction in a multi-car pile-up; however, it is possible for two or more cars to share the blame for a multi-car accident. The amount of blame or “fault” will be determined by either the police officer who writes the report or by the insurance adjusters, negotiating for an optimum solution. For example, one driver may be deemed to be 80% at fault, while another driver takes the remaining 20% of the blame. It is possible for several people to share in the fault, or even everyone involved sharing some of the responsibility. The more details, cars and people that are part of the scenario, the more complicated the determination of fault becomes. See in this video how the chain reaction just keeps happening - taken on Sunday, December 8, 2013 in Milwaukee.

What kind of insurance coverage do I need if I'm involved in a multi-car accident?
While it can be extremely difficult to determine “fault” during the investigation of a multi-vehicle accident, here is what we do know:

1. The damage to the vehicles involved in multi-car accidents is often more extensive than a one or two-car accident. Vehicles are often hit in different areas, sometimes over and over.
2. There is an increased likelihood of bodily injury because, again, the vehicles are often hit over and over again. Both drivers and passengers are statistically injured more severely in multi-car accidents.
3. If you are found at fault for a multi-car accident, for any percentage of the blame, you could be sued by other injured parties.

Carrying adequate liability coverage can shield you from most or all of this, especially when it's coupled with an umbrella policy. Additionally, liability insurance pays your legal defense costs should an injured party sue you.

What should I do to protect myself if I’m involved in a multi-car crash?

1. Most importantly, stay in your vehicle with your seatbelt fastened. Make sure everyone else in your vehicle has their seatbelt fastened as well, until law enforcement or EMTs give you the OK to exit. Keep in mind that there are still thousands of pounds of metal and glass moving toward you, and you could still be hit a second or third time. This video shows how dangerous standing outside your car can be.
2. Put your hazard flashing lights on.
3. After law enforcement has secured the scene, and if you are in a position to collect your thoughts, it would be wise to take a few minutes to record your observations on the incident. With large incidents, ensuring that your involvement is thoroughly detailed will be important when claim time comes.
4. Once you've been in an accident, notify your insurance carrier or agent immediately.

Knowing what you now know about multi-car accidents, reviewing the liability limits on your auto policy and having the discussion with your independent insurance agent about an umbrella policy is the next step to making sure you are safe and protected should any multi-car accident happen to you. Contact a knowledgebroker for more details about liability coverages, umbrella policies, or for Wisconsin residents to get a quote on their auto and home insurance.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the injured and their families from Sunday's extensive, weather-related, multi-car pile-ups that occurred all over the metro Milwaukee area. Be safe out there!

Black ice, or clear ice, is a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface. While it's not truly black, it is virtually transparent allowing the roadways to be seen through it and can cause havoc for unsuspecting drivers. There are some things you can do to combat this invisible killer:

Check the Temperature Gage

Temps between 32 degrees and 36 degrees Fahrenheit, high humidity, and icy rain contribute to ice-making conditions.

How to Keep Control in a Skid

Point the front wheels to where you want the car to travel.

Hit the Brake

If your car has ABS (anti-lock braking system), hold down the brake pedal and keep the car straight unless you need to steer to avoid traffic, in which case move your hands to the 9 and 3 o'clock positions on the wheel, and steer smoothly while continuing to press on the brake.

Gain Control when Front Wheels Slip

If your front wheels slip while you're turning, resist the instinct to brake and over-compensate & ease off the accelerator and the steering angle to allow the wheels to roll freely.

Wisconsin residents, the best thing you can do when roads are icy is to avoid driving all together if you can. Wisconsin residents, please contact us for more ways we can help keep you protected.

You can be a fuel-efficient driver and avoid heavy breaking & accelerating but if you want to try to make it even further between gas fill-ups, you may need to invest in some automotive maintenance.

Improve fuel efficiency with these five easy fixes:

• Close your gas gap - Make sure it's clicked and you could save yourself green dollars - if the cap isn't tightened the fuel can evaporate.
• Routine maintenance - Keeping your car running efficiently and adjusting your driving behavior are the best ways to keep more money in your pocket.
• Properly Inflate your Tires - Underinflated tires put more stress on your vehicle, making it work harder and burn more gas.
• Replace clogged air filters- This can boost gas mileage by as much as 14 percent on o
• lder vehicles.

There is a new online system called the eMV Public which is designed to assist Wisconsin residents who purchase or acquire a vehicle and need to title & register it in their name. It's available for autos, light trucks, SUVs, and motorcycles & can be done by visiting the Wisconsin Department of Transportation Website.

In order to use the system, you'll need to have:

• Wisconsin title, signed by the seller(s), including: An odometer reading completed by the seller(s) on the back of the title for vehicles less than 10 model years old.
• A lien release if there is a lien holder listed on the front of the title and the loan is paid off.
• A printer with 8 ½ by 11 inch paper. and the Adobe Acrobat Readers (you may need to adjust the default viewer to use Adobe Acrobat Reader for different internet browsers)
• A Wisconsin Driver License or Identification card, last four digits of your social security number and date of birth.

Note: Never buy a vehicle without seeing and receiving a title signed by the previous owner.

Wisconsin residents, if you have questions about securing insurance protection for your newly acquired auto, please contact us and we'll give you a quote.

Residing in every WASB members’ offices is a pot of gold. Okay, it’s not really gold, and it’s not in a pot. But it is real money, and can pay dividends for many years. Many districts and CESAs believe the cost of their workers’ compensation insurance has no relationship to behavior, the cost is set by the state, and only the size of the district (i.e., total payroll) changes the cost. None of that is true.

Cause and Effect
Districts that R&R Insurance has worked with are educating administrators, buildings and grounds, food service personnel, coaches, and teachers on how workers’ compensation insurance works. Part of the education process is understanding the elements that contribute to the cost of workers’ compensation insurance:

• Workers’ compensation losses: (also referred to as claims) these are incidents resulting in an insurance company paying medical expenses on behalf of, or indemnity (income-replacement) benefits to, employees injured on the job.
• Medical-only claims: workers’ compensation claims that contemplate seeking medical treatment and being absent from work for not more than three days.
• Lost-time claims: workers’ compensation claims where an injured employee is absent from work for a period of four or more days as a result of the injury or disease.
• Rates by duties: (also referred to as classification codes) these are amounts charged employers by insurance companies per $100 of payroll for employees engaged in certain job functions. For example, class code 8868 is applied to professors, administrators, and teachers, etc.
• Experience modification factor: In trainings, districts should learn how each of these elements impacts their workers’ compensation premium. Through this educational process, employees quickly see how their actions impact the cost of the district’s workers’ compensation insurance.

“One for Three”
The slogan, “One for Three” has a special, but not favorable, meaning relative to a district’s experience modification factor. It refers to the fact that any workers’ compensation claim that flows into the pipeline of information used to calculate your experience modification factor remains in the formula for three years. Claims drive up your experience modification factor and workers’ compensation insurance premium — for three years!

In calculating an experience modification factor, the Wisconsin Compensation Rating Bureau develops expected losses (from workers’ compensation claims) for different types of jobs. Examples showing expected workers’ compensation losses for teachers and other employees versus actual losses incurred are available for local districts.

It has been interesting — and financially meaningful for districts and CESAs — to observe that understanding how workers’ compensation losses impact premiums creates an awareness of the effect of unsafe work practices. With more information, district personnel often change their behavior and a team mind-set between schools can develop. We have stories of custodians telling each other not to lift heavy items without help. During a staff workshop, a teacher volunteered to hang up a chart and grabbed a chair to stand. In unison, the rest of the participants shouted, “Don’t! Get a ladder!” The participants knew that a fall from the chair could likely impact their experience modification factor.

The Next Phase — Training and Committees
Following education regarding how a district’s experience modification factor is calculated, job-specific safety training should be held. Buildings and grounds training involves hazard recognition, ladder safety, and proper lifting and driver safety. Food service training involves slip and fall hazard recognition, proper footwear, handling sharp instruments, proper lifting and hygiene. Administrator and teacher training focuses on driver safety, proper lifting techniques, ladder safety and hazard recognition. Training is then done with group tabletop exercises, presentations by safety professionals, and via computer-based training.

In addition to training, districts should establish safety committees and bring parties together from individual schools and disciplines to focus on employee and student safety issues. Some districts successful in holding down their workers’ compensation costs have used staff from one school to visit other schools within the district, providing a fresh set of eyes to look for potential loss exposure. When districts share safety committee meeting results with member schools, oftentimes, there are positive safety results.

Successful districts have created a culture where safety is emphasized; a culture that tells employees and students their well-being and health is of paramount concern, and it offers the additional benefit of favorably impacting a district’s bottom line through fewer, and less expensive, workers’ compensation claims.

Examples of Success in Two Districts

SCHOOL DISTRICT #1 had consistently bad losses. No one in the district was truly paying attention to the problem. Their experience modification factor increased for several years in a row. When the administrators realized how much money could be saved regarding workers’ compensation costs, they implemented educational pro- grams. The district saved $54,000 in premium each year by lowering their experience modification factor.

SCHOOL DISTRICT #2 identified a job type within the district that was generating most of their losses. The district focused on the troubled area and let the employees know that the cost from their depar tment was a problem. They used various methods to change behavior, which resulted in increased safety awareness and a $10,745 annual savings. This savings was 17 percent of the workers’ compensation premium.

Hattendorf is a practice leader with R&R Insurance School Practice Group. You can contact him at Bill.Hattendorf@rrins.com or 262-953-7128.

Article as seen in the September 2013 issue of "Wisconsin School News"

Preparing to hand out Halloween candy for trick-or-treating? Having people on your property is always risky, especially strangers dressed in costumes! Proceed with caution to make sure you minimize your Halloween scare:

• Trips and falls that take place outside your home - this will be covered by your liability coverage, and your insurance will pay for your defense coverage too. If you need more coverage, consider buying an umbrella policy, which will go above your home and auto!
• Smaller injuries - this will be covered by medical payment coverage, which is a no fault coverage and could provide protection for a smaller injury. Need a reminder on what is included in your policy? We can help!
• If you turn your dwelling into a haunted house and open it to visitors for payment - your home insurance will not likely cover this because you are running a business. (Businesses operating haunted houses require their own insurance.)
• Stolen / damaged decorations - this would be covered under your personal property limit, subject to the applicable deductible but you may want to determine if it's really worth pursing a claim.

Four things homeowners can do to keep the 'treat' in trick-or-treating:

1. Take extra effort to eliminate tripping hazards on your porch and walkway.
2. Check around your property for low tree limbs, support wires, or garden hoses that may prove hazardous to young children rushing from house to house.
3. Pets get frightened on Halloween. Keep pets in a safe area to protect them from cars or inadvertently biting a trick-or-treater.
4. Glow sticks, light sticks, or battery-powered lights for jack-o-lanterns are preferable to real flame candles.

For more information on how R&R can help you with your home insurance protection, visit our website.

We recently learned of an unfortunate Waukesha family who got into a terrible stinky mess with a family of skunks. The skunks made a home for themselves under their deck. The smell was so terrible that the family had to move out of their home. They hired an extermination company that repeatedly had to bomb the area under the deck, which didn't work to remove the skunks. They finally had to remove the deck completely, clear out the skunk's home, and then replace the deck. The claim was well over $20,000 to exterminate, repair the deck and clean all home items that still reeked of skunk spray.

That got us wondering about how a homeowner's policy would respond to this type of loss. It turns out - the damage is covered by your homeowner's policy - Here is the technical answer found on PropertyCasualty360.com:

Is a skunk a rodent and therefore excluded under the homeowners’ policy? Is there coverage for any of the damage caused by the skunk?

The standard homeowner's form excludes coverage for damage caused by vermin, rodents, birds, or insects. Birds and insects are readily identifiable; it's the rodents and vermin that cause the problem. “Rodent” is a scientific classification; according to Merriam Webster Online a rodent is any of an order (Rodentia) of relatively small gnawing mammals (as a mouse, squirrel, or beaver) that have in both jaws a single pair of incisors with a chisel-shaped edge.

Biologically speaking, every living thing is classified by Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, so once you determine a creature's order, you know whether or not you have a rodent. For the record, skunks are not rodents, so there is coverage for skunk damage to the dwelling.

Candy's favorite holiday is Halloween! So, what candy do Americans enjoy the most? This ranking was based on the sales of candy units weighing less than 3.5 oz, which includes most candy bars. According to the National Confectioners Association, 72% of all candy spending this Halloween will be on chocolate. Let's see if you were able to guess any of these:

America's favorite Halloween Chocolate:

10. Almond Joy

9. Milky Way

8. Hershey's Cookies N' Creme

7. 3 Musketeers

6. Twix 4 to Go

5. Kit Kat

4. Hershey's

3. Snickers

2. M&M's

1. Reese's

Last year, more than $16.6 billion was spent on chocolate in the United States. We hope you get some of your favorites in your trick-or-treat bags this year! Happy Halloween and learn some tips to keep trick-or-treating safe.

For information on how R&R Insurance can help with your insurance protection, please visit our website.

I attended the recent 2013 State of WI Homeland Security Cyber Conference. The overall message from the day: it is not IF you will suffer a breach but WHEN you will suffer a breach. I'm to passing along a few notes:

• Back in 2012 the State of South Carolina suffered a breach that exposed 3.8 million taxpayers, 1.9 million dependents, 700,000 businesses and 3.3 million bank accounts. The Breach occurred because an employee inadvertently opened a pfishing email. This error cost the state over $20 million—all because of an email. The State didn’t realize that they had been attacked until notified by law enforcement.
• Lockhead Martin had discovered an attack of their network that came in the form of emails sent to employees that had attended a conference by sending emails that appeared to send follow up slides and information to the conference attendees.

The FBI reported that the landscape for cyber crimes is changing to state sponsored attacks, i.e. countries trying to steal US companies R&D trade secrets from the private sector. Attacks are advanced and aggressive.

• As individuals we should be aware that our greatest vulnerability is using credit/debit cards at places such as gas pumps, bus rides, remote vendors, etc. Companies that accept credit cards and are PCI compliant need to realize that this compliance is a baseline minimum.
• The biggest threat to networks are the employees: "Think before you click" / "Beware before you share" should be the mantra. Businesses need to promote a culture of security awareness.
• Private companies are urged to join InfraGuard which is a way to communicate with the FBI regarding threats and for the FBI to communicate back to businesses. www.infragard.org

No matter what precautions a company takes, you will never get ahead of a hacker.

The speakers included representatives from Utility Companies, Banking, Security Consulting, FBI, SC Dept of Revenue, and The State of Wisconsin National Guard/Homeland Security.

See the conversation on Twitter by searching #WICyber.

No one insurance agent or broker has a monopoly on cost effective, great ideas. With that in mind, I have set out to interview 52 Wisconsin professionals in 52 weeks.

Here at R&R Insurance our tagline is, "We are the Knowledge Brokers." Because of that, I do my best to pass along important information on emerging issues and I don't limit it to insurance. I will be interviewing business professionals from a variety of industries including insurance, IT, Human Resources, real estate, wellness experts, local business alliances, and many more.

Take a look at the interviews and share the knowledge! Questions? Just drop me a line.