BOOK NOTES. 225. U. S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION -
AUTOMOBILE. AND COMPENSATION STUDY, Superintendent of Documents,.
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U. S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION - AUTOMOBILE AND COMPENSATION STUDY, Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. REVIEWS OF FOUR REPORTS toward Auto Insurance, a report of the Survey Research Center Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan, 266 pages, March 1970; and Supplement, 45 pages, September 1970.
Public Attitudes
Reviewed by DALE A. NELSON This is, the first of several volumes that have been published as part of the Department of Transportation’s Automobile Insurance and Compensation Study. It contains two separate reports dealing with public. attitudes: one is on the opinion survey conducted for the DOT by the Survey Research Center, Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan; the other is a compilation of selected complaint letters received by the DOT. The latter consists of excerpts from some 83 complaint letters on various automobile insurance problems - cancellations, non-renewals, premium charges, claim handling, etc. - along with the insurance company’s explanation for its particular action on each case. As is typical with such complaints, the majority seemto stem from misunderstandings or the lack of sufficient information on the part of one or both parties involved. Most of the attention given to this volume, though, has been focuskd on the opinion survey. The Survey Research Center has had considerable experience in this area, and its surveys have formed the basis for several widely used “indices” of consumer intentions. The Center’s report on public attitudes toward automobile insurance is based on a national cross-section of households, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. A standard, area probability sampling technique was used to select the households, and the survey results are based on personal interviews conducted during 1969 with 3,075 respondents. Actually, most of the attitudes concerning auto insurance are based on the interviews for the 2,534 car-owning households. This, together with the fact that most of the respondents were heads-of-household, makes it somewhat questionable
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whether or not the survey really reflects a true cross-section of public opinion. Attitude surveys always present problems in interpretation, largely because of the many subjective factors influencing people’s opinion. This is especially true of this study, and as noted at the beginning of the report, “ . . . some of the attitudes presented in this report ,must be assumed to represent ad hoc attitudes rather than attitudes resulting from careful consideration or deliberation. No doubt some respondents had not given any thought to the matters about which they were asked, and they replied according to how they felt at the moment.” Unfortunately, this word of caution was generally ignored in the early press releases on this study - many of which alleged that public opinion was shifting towards a no-fault system. This “finding” appears to be based on the responsesto the following questions: A65 In most states, this is how automobile liability insurance is set up now: If you are involved in an accident, you have a claim against another person (or his insurance company) only if you can prove that the other person alone is at fault. Would you say that this is a good system, a bad system, or what? A67 Suppose auto insurance were made similar to fire or hospital insurance. Then, in case of an accident your losses- including damage to your car, hospital or doctor bills, and loss of wages - would be paid by your own insurance company, no matter whether you or the other driver were at fault. Would you be in favor of or opposed to such a system? On the first question, 56% felt the present system was good and 28% bad. The responses to the second are seemingly contradictory, since 57% would be in favor of the proposed system and 30% opposed. If anything, though, it probably indicates only that a great number of people would be satisfied with either system. A large amount of other, more factual, information was also developed in the survey, relating to such items as the kinds of insurance coverage carried by the household, their claim experience, etc. In reviewing this material one needs to keep in mind that the responses are for households, not individuals. For example, the survey indicates that 93% carry liability insurance, which seems high in comparison with the usual figure of 80-85%
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for the percentage of insured automobiles. However, it apparently means that 93% of the households carry liability insurance on at least one of their cars. Many of the tables contained in this study include cross-tabulations of the attitudinal responseswith these more factual data - such as age, driving record, income, etc. By-and-large, the responses follow a predictable pattern. For instance, persons who have had recent accidents or problems with finding insurance are less satisfied with the present system. This portion of the study has been further extended in a more recent DOT publication, Publp Attitudes Supplement to The Economic Consequences of Automobile Accident Injuries, which summarizes the attitudes expressed by the respond-
ents in the DOT’s serious injury study.
Economic Consequences of Automobile
Accident Injuries, Vol. I, Part 1, Summary and Analysis; Vol. I, Part 2, Reference Tables, 383 pages, Vol. II, Part 3, Appendices, 294 pages, April 1970.
Reviewed by JEFFREY T. LANGE The Department of Transportation has issued more than twenty volumes as part of its Automobile Insurance and Compensation Study. Many of these studies have been academic treatises and only a few volumes have been based upon statistical investigations. This particular study, prepared for the Department by Westat Research, Inc., with the assistance of the U. S. Bureau of the Census, falls into the latter category and is a major contribution to the literature on the workings of the automobile accident reparations system. It presents a detailed statistical picture of the economic losses sustained and the compensation received by individuals seriously injured in automobile accidents. The report consists of less than sixty pages of text followed by several hundred pages of statistical tables and appendices. The text provides an overview of the report and the major conclusions which were drawn from the data. The tables are in sufficient detail so that the reader may use them not only to check the conclusions, but also for other research work on automobile accidents. To most actuaries, the tables will be the most interesting part of the report since they present useful auto accident data, some of which was not previously available. Finally, the appendices provided a discussion of methodology involved in the study.
