Speed is helping drive up insurance costs

Surely, you’ve seen it — drivers on the roads going crazy, crazy fast. You might even be guilty of it.

“Yes, we have absolutely seen it,” said New Hampshire State Police Lt. Christopher Storm.

A trend that started during the pandemic — because of largely empty, unpatrolled roads as people stayed home — has continued post-pandemic.

“We have exponentially seen the increase in people traveling at not only 90 miles an hour, but over 100 miles an hour,” said Storm, commander of Special Services, the section that oversees the Special Enforcement Unit, which includes aircraft used for speed enforcement. “We are seeing it every single day.”

And there’s a price to pay beyond a ticket or court summons. Reckless behavior behind the wheel drives up the cost of automobile insurance for everyone, according to state insurance officials.

Storm offered the following statistics that illustrate driver behavior on Interstate 95 and Interstate 93, the primary areas of aircraft patrols:

In 2015, state police made 5,018 stops, 359 for driving 90-plus miles per hour, 23 for driving 100-plus mph.

In 2020, they made 5,025 stops, 900 for 90-plus, 81 for 100-plus.

In 2023, they made 3,115 stops, 840 for 90-plus, 89 for 100-plus.

In 2023, because of staffing and weather-related events, there were fewer air patrols and fewer stops, according to Storm. But what’s telling, he said, is the percentage of excessive-speed drivers among those who were stopped on the two interstates. In 2015, that percentage was 7.6. In 2020, it was 19.5%. In 2023, it was 29.8%.

Across the entire state in 2023, New Hampshire Department of Safety and Division of Motor Vehicles data showed 116 people were given tickets for driving 100-109 mph, while another 10 people were ticketed for driving 110-120 mph.

On March 8, during an enforcement operation on I-93 in the Salem area, state police ticketed 56 drivers in a three-hour span.

Seven of those drivers were clocked going more than 100 miles per hour. A Massachusetts man was arrested for allegedly driving 128 miles per hour.

“We are out there, and we are going to stop you,” Storm said.

All this begs the question: Why are some people driving like maniacs?

Insurance institutes, the National Highway Safety Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, even psychologists, have tried to delve into the psyche of certain driver behavior that seemed to change during the COVID pandemic, but then didn’t correct itself after the pandemic had eased.

A reading of some of those studies reveals that the excessive speeds had to do with stress. The pandemic’s emotional stress contributed to distracted driving to the point where a driver didn’t realize they were driving at excessive speeds.

Other studies put risky behavior as the root cause.

An October 2021 report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that COVID fed the risky behavior in certain individuals. “After the declaration of the public health emergency in March 2020, driving patterns and behaviors in the United States changed significantly,” said the report. “Of the drivers who remained on the roads, some engaged in riskier behavior, including speeding, failure to wear seat belts, and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.”

Still others said the risky drivers of the COVID era and post-COVID era were probably always risky drivers.

Dwight A. Hennessy, a Buffalo, N.Y., State College professor and chair of the Psychology Department, was asked in an online Q&A: What about the people who are violating rules on the road? What’s going on there?

“This is going to sound like a super obvious statement, but what the evidence tells us in the traffic world is that the people who are most likely to violate the rules are the people who are most likely to violate the rules,” he said. “It extends to life in general, when we talk about personality in psychology. There’s an equivalent concept in the driving world of driver personality, that people drive the way they live. The people who are willing to drive fast, and I’d be willing to put money down on this, were probably driving too fast before all of this went down.”

Storm takes a more general view of the issue that encompasses modern car technology, distracted driving and aggressive behavior.

The highways are better, wider, according to Storm. Our cars are better, with quieter, more efficient engines and with all kinds of digital/electronic gadgetry.

“I think you see the technology in these vehicles — people feel like they don’t even know that they’re going that fast,” Storm said. “I also think that there’s all these ancillary distractions now that are out there, between all the Bluetooth, between all of the different mechanisms and so forth that come within those vehicles, that people are really honestly distracted and not paying attention to what they’re doing.”

“They may not even realize — because of the technology, because of the roadways — that they’re doing that until they look up and they realize, ‘Oh my God, I’m passing everybody,’” Storm added.

And then there are the people who have no respect for other drivers or the rules of the road.

“We do always have those people that just don’t respect each other; they don’t respect others,” Storm said.

When it comes to insurance, the national average cost for car insurance is $2,118 per year, according to Forbes Advisor’s analysis of full coverage car insurance rates. New York is the most expensive state for car insurance at $4,769, and Idaho is the cheapest at $1,021. New Hampshire’s average is $1,411.

But rates here and everywhere have been climbing over the years. From 2023 to 2024 alone, full coverage auto insurance in the United States and in New Hampshire increased by 26%, according to Bankrate.

Several factors influence premiums: age, gender, geography, type of car, crime rate. But driver behavior in a state can also influence the cost.

“The connection between reckless driving habits and escalating auto insurance rates continues to be supported by claims data,” said Christian Citarella, chief property and casualty actuary at the New Hampshire Insurance Department.

“Engaging in speeding or distracted driving not only jeopardizes your own safety but also endangers the lives of fellow motorists on the road. It’s crucial for Granite Staters to understand that their choices behind the wheel also affect the availability and affordability of insurance coverage for all drivers.”

TRIP, a national transportation research nonprofit organization, looked at New Hampshire’s fatal accidents over a five-year stretch from 2019 to 2023.

The fatal crashes it considered included motor vehicles and motorcycles, along with pedestrian and bicyclist collisions:

• 2019, 101 fatalities

• 2020, 104 fatalities

• 2021, 118 fatalities

• 2022, 148 fatalities

• 2023, 127 fatalities

“The significant increase in traffic fatalities since the onset of the pandemic appears largely related to increased risks being taken by drivers,” the TRIP report specific to New Hampshire said. TRIP drew its data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHA).

Based on NHTSA’s traffic crash cost methodology, TRIP estimates that fatal and serious traffic crashes in New Hampshire in 2022 caused a total of $11 billion in the value of societal harm, which includes $2.8 billion in economic costs and $8.5 billion in quality-of-life costs.

An analysis of NHTSA crash data from a personal injury law firm, Dismuke Law, shows New Hampshire ranks seventh in terms of the percentage of fatal crashes involving a speeding driver between 2004 and 2021. It said the total number of fatal crashes was 2,219 in that period. Of that, 885 involved a speeding driver, meaning 39.88% of fatal crashes involved a speeding driver. Hawaii was at the top of the list with 46.94%.

To address one cause of fatal crashes — distracted driving — the NH Department of Public Safety is looking to use $497,374 from an NHTSA grant to fund both enhanced enforcement and a media campaign.

“These funds are necessary to use to be able to increase the visibility of law enforcement on New Hampshire roads to help reduce overall crashes and the resulting injuries and or deaths associated with distracted driving,” Safety Commissioner Robert Quinn said in a February letter to Gov. Chris Sununu and the legislative fiscal committee.

“These distracted driving funds will also support messaging to inform the motoring public of the dangers associated with driving while distracted to help change this negative driving behavior.”

According to the department, distracted driving was the root cause of 42 fatal crashes from 2014 to 2020, and in 2021 contributed to 15% of total crashes.

For Storm and his enforcement unit, there is a concerted effort to crack down on reckless driving, which, in New Hampshire, is driving in such a manner that the lives and safety of the public are endangered.

“The New Hampshire State Police issued 932 reckless operation tickets last year, and I would say a majority of those tickets are tickets that are issued for traveling over 100 miles an hour,” Storm said.

At that speed, according to Storm, crashes can be devastating.

“The crashes are getting worse. That’s the problem,” Storm said. “Every time these folks crash at 100 miles an hour, it’s devastating for all these different families, all these victims, and for themselves. So we are making an absolute effort to get out there to slow these people down.”

And there’s an economic cost, as well. “Speeding, reckless operation and distracted driving are not just risky behaviors on the road, they are also key contributors to the increasing costs of auto insurance,” said Deputy Insurance Commissioner Keith Nyhan.

“These behaviors not only threaten lives on the road but also drive up insurance rates for everyone. It’s imperative that we prioritize safe driving practices to safeguard lives and ensure affordable insurance coverage for all motorists.”

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‘The connection between reckless driving habits and escalating auto insurance rates continues to be supported by claims data.’

— Christian Citarella, chief property and casualty actuary, NH Insurance Department