Insurer Chubb Corp (CB.N) received 35 percent more claims for car-animal collisions in the first three months of 2012 than it did for all of 2011, the company said on Wednesday.

If those figures hold across the industry, they would mark a sharp reversal. State Farm, the country’s largest auto insurer, has reported a decline in car-deer incidents for three years running, through last summer.

In a post on the company’s risk blog, Chubb executives speculated the warm weather may have pushed both people and animals onto the roads.

“It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why the numbers have risen, but I suspect the unusually mild winter may have made for a more active wildlife population,” said Ray Crisci, worldwide auto manager for Chubb’s personal insurance unit, adding that conditions may have led people to drive more, too.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the winter of 2011-2012 was the fourth-warmest ever in the United States.

Car-animal collisions may not seem high-risk, but they account for roughly 4 percent of light vehicle crashes and some 200 deaths annually, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said.

Based on an estimated insured cost of $2,800 per collision, according to the Insurance Information Institute, that represents a cost of nearly $700 million a year.

(Reporting By Ben Berkowitz; editing by John Wallace)

The Climate Prediction Center predicted moderate chances that a tropical depression or a storm will form in the Caribbean during the last week of May.

Even if no storm develops, the prediction signals that the Atlantic is becoming primed for tropical activity as June 1, the official start of the six-month hurricane season, nears.

“It’s something to pay attention to. It might be a little earlier than normal,” said Eric Blake, a specialist with the National Hurricane Center.

While the two-week tropical hazard forecasts by the Climate Prediction Center are not very accurate now, meteorologists there are working with the National Hurricane Center to improve them. Within a few years, the two agencies plan to start making a joint two-week forecast, with the hurricane center taking the lead on the first week and the climate center handling the second, said Blake, who gave a presentation about the project at the Governor’s Hurricane Conference here on Tuesday.

He said the hurricane center began working with the climate center on the two-week outlook shortly after the busy 2005 hurricane season.

“The challenge has really been eliminating the false alarms,” Blake said.

The two-week outlook mostly relies on thunderstorm activity around the global tropics to predict where chances are increased for a tropical storm or depression to form. Clusters of thunderstorms occasionally move around the globe in a weather pattern called the Madden-Julian Oscillation or MJO. When the thunderstorms are over the Caribbean and Africa, the chances for tropical storms to develop in the Atlantic increase, Blake said.

But because weather is so variable, forecasts that extend beyond a week tend to have a large margin of error. The five-day forecast for tropical activity, however, is getting much better.

Blake said the hurricane center will experiment this year, in-house, with predicting the formation of tropical storms five days in advance. If the forecasts pan out, weather buffs, fishermen, shipping businesses, emergency planners and those in the oil and gas extraction industries could benefit from those forecasts beginning next year.

By Kate Spinner

The North Carolina Industrial Commission has ordered more than a dozen employers to attend a May 22 hearing in an attempt to resolve claims that have been dragged though the legal system for decades. Employers who refuse to pay or settle part of a claim will face contempt charges and be ordered to jail.

“In the interest of better serving the employees and employers of North Carolina and enforcing the provisions of the workers’ compensation law, the North Carolina Industrial Commission is reviewing its contempt procedures,” said Pamela Young, chair of the commission that is charged with enforcing the state’s workers’ compensation law.

The commission’s action came within weeks of a study conducted by the Raleigh, N.C-based News and Observers that found that tens of thousands of employers may be operating without coverage.

At issue are the commission’s lack of resources to monitor the many worksites around the state, a lack of communication among state agencies, and an apparent reluctance to penalize employers.

The commission contracts with the North Carolina Rate Bureau to collect the data over the number of employers in the state with workers’ compensation coverage. The bureau reported that insurers provide coverage to 140,000 business with another 117 companies self-insured. That leaves many business without coverage.

By law, employers are required to inform the bureau on of the commission’s behalf, when they purchase, renew or cancel coverage.

For all practicable purposes, however, the information is a one-way street. Commission officials acknowledge using the database to find the insurer responsible for covering a claim, but do not monitor cancellations. As a result, they only find out an employer is without coverage when an injured worker files a claim.

Also, when it comes to pursuing employers without coverage, it has little leverage to enforce the law. The law states that employers found not in compliance with the law can be fined $100 per day and the cost of any benefits and medical expenses the injured worker should have collected.

The Industrial Commission’s Fraud Unit reported that since January 2011, it has only pursued 225 cases where employers where found not to have proper coverage. The unit reported collecting $30,500 in fines, which equals around $135 per case.

That is why North Carolina has decided to approach having proper workers’ compensation not just a civil matter, but a criminal one as well.

“In response to the issues raised, we now have some concrete plans,” said Young.

By Michael Adams

U.S. drivers drove 1.2 percent fewer miles in 2011, NHTSA said.

Rebecca Lindland, director of automotive research for IHS Inc., said more and better air bags, higher seat-belt use and vehicles designed to allow people to survive a crash are the main reasons for the decline in traffic deaths in recent years.

The rate of fatalities per 100 million miles driven in the United States last year was 1.09, down from 1.11 in 2010 and down from 1.46 in 2005, NHTSA said.

Traffic deaths have fallen 26 percent since 2005, when 43,510 people died in crashes, NHTSA said.

Last year, the only U.S. region to have an increase in traffic deaths was California, Arizona and Hawaii, where fatalities rose 3.3 percent, NHTSA said.

SAFER VEHICLES

“Cars and trucks (including sport utility vehicles) are definitely getting safer and a big point is that they are co-existing on the road better,” said Lindland.

She said that since SUVs started to proliferate on American roads in the 1990s, SUVs and pickup trucks have been designed to cause less damage to lower-profile passenger cars.

The SUVs have lower bumpers and the areas where they would hit shorter cars is lower, and safer, she said.

She said that drivers are using seat belts at a higher rate and that passive safety measures like air bags are becoming more prevalent.

“The number would be even lower without distracted driving,” Lindland said.

NHTSA did not provide information on distracted driving deaths last year. But, in 2010, it said that some 3,092 were killed in “distracted-affected crashes,” which was 9.4 percent of overall road fatalities that year.

Thirty-seven of the 50 U.S. states have totally banned using the keyboard — texting — on a mobile phone or other device while driving, and 10 states have outlawed the use of handheld phones.

The states, along with the District of Columbia, that have banned phone calls while driving — without using a hands-free device — are California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, West Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, New York and Connecticut.

(Reporting By Bernie Woodall; editing by M.D. Golan)

The same survey showed that 48 percent said they had seen one or both of their parents using a cell phone without a hands-free device.

Nevertheless, last year there were the fewest traffic fatalities in the United States in more than six decades.

The number would have been even lower if not for traffic deaths caused by drivers who were distracted by using a mobile phone or engaged in other types of attention-dividing tasks, said Rebecca Lindland, director of automotive research for IHS Inc.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that in 2010, some 3,092 were killed in “distracted-affected crashes,” or 9.4 percent of all road deaths.

A NHTSA survey earlier this year showed that younger drivers from ages 18 to 20 showed the highest level of phone involvement in crashes or near-crashes. Drivers of this age are three times more likely to read or send an email or text message while driving than those 25 and older, the NHTSA survey found.

Reports of texting while driving drop sharply as age increases, NHTSA said.

The Consumer Reports survey said that half the young drivers survey said they are less likely to text while driving or use a handheld phone while a friend is in the vehicle with them.

A NHTSA observational study found that in the latest two years for which data was available, 2009 and 2010, 5 percent of drivers were seen talking on handheld phones.

Thirty-seven of the 50 U.S. states have totally banned using the keyboard – texting – on a mobile phone or other device while driving, and 10 states have outlawed the use of handheld phones.

The states, along with the District of Columbia, that have banned phone calls while driving – without using a hands-free device – are California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, West Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, New York and Connecticut.

The Consumer Reports survey questioned 1,049 people ages 16 to 21 and the NHTSA survey from earlier this year questioned 6,000 people of driving age. Both surveys were of U.S. drivers.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Jackie Frank)

In January 2010, the National Safety Council (NSC) released a report estimating that at least 1.6 million crashes (28 percent of all crashes) are caused each year in the U.S. by drivers talking on cellphones (1.4 million crashes) and texting (200,000 crashes). The estimate is based on data of driver cellphone use from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and research that quantifies the risks using cellphones and texting while driving.

A July 2009 Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study found that texting while driving is far more dangerous than previously estimated. The collision risk became 23 times higher when motorists were texting while driving.

In addition, as of June 2010 eight states (California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Utah and Washington State) plus the District of Columbia, ban the use of hand-held cellphones while driving.

Employers May Be Held Liable

Employers are now concerned that they may be held liable for accidents caused by their employees while driving and conducting work-related conversations on cellphones, according to the I.I.I. Under the doctrine of vicarious responsibility, employers may be held legally accountable for the negligent acts of employees committed in the course of employment. Employers may also be found negligent if they fail to put in place a policy for the safe use of cellphones.

The I.I.I. recommends the following safety tips when driving:

Pull Off the Road
Don’t drive while calling or texting; pull off the road to a safe location.
Use Speed Dialing
Program frequently called numbers and your local emergency number into the speed dial feature of your phone for easy, one-touch dialing. when available, use auto answer or voice-activated dialing.
Never Dial While Driving
If you must dial manually, do so only when stopped. Pull off the road, or better yet, have a passenger dial for you.
Take a Message
Let your voice mail pick up your calls in tricky driving situations. It’s easy—and safer—to retrieve your messages later on.
Know When to Stop Talking
Keep conversations on the phone and in the car brief so you can concentrate on your driving. if a long discussion is required, if the topic is stressful or emotional, or if driving becomes hazardous, end your conversation and continue it once you are off the road.
Keep the Phone in Its Holder
Make sure your phone is securely in its holder when you are not using it so it does not pop out and distract you when you are driving.
Don’t Take Notes While Driving
If you need to write something down, use a tape recorder or pull off the road.
Don’t Eat or Drink While Driving
Spills, both hot and cold, can easily cause an accident. If you have to stop short, you could also be severely burned.
Groom Yourself At Home
Shaving, putting on makeup, combing your hair or other forms of preening are distractions and should be done at home, not while driving.

While everyone should follow these safety rules, it is particularly important to review them carefully with teens when they are first learning to drive. “Teens and Distracted Driving”, a Pew Internet & American Life Project 2009 survey of 800 young people, found that 26 percent of American teens ages 16 to 17 have texted while driving and 43 percent have talked on a cellphone while driving. Forty-eight percent of teens ages 12 to 17 say they have been in a car when the driver was texting and 40 percent say they have been in a car when the driver used a cellphone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.

It said the 2012 forecast numbers were slightly below the adjusted long-term average for 1950-2011 of 12 tropical storms, seven hurricanes and three intense hurricanes.

The hurricane season in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico runs from June 1 through Nov. 30.

“After very active tropical seasons in 2010 and 2011, we expect fewer storms to develop this hurricane season,” said Todd Crawford, Weather Services International’s chief meteorologist.

WSI’s outlook for the season is in line with one issued earlier this month by the respected team of forecasters at Colorado State University.

As with Colorado State, Crawford said calls for a milder 2012 season were based on two factors. Hurricanes thrive on warm water and the Atlantic Ocean has cooled this year, he said.

He said there may also be a trend toward development of an El Nino effect this summer, fueling hopes for a “notable reduction” in tropical storm activity.

El Nino is a warming of sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific that occurs every four to 12 years and has far-ranging effects around the globe.

The weather phenomenon creates wind shear that makes it harder for nascent storms to develop into hurricanes in the Atlantic-Caribbean basin, but it also can produce drought and crop failure in parts of South Asia and unseasonably wet conditions in western coastal areas of South America.

“There is still uncertainty regarding the development of El Nino, which will impact future (forecast) updates. If the chances of El Nino development increase, our forecast numbers will likely go down even further in future updates,” Crawford said.

STAY ON ALERT, COMMUNITIES URGED

He said there was no particularly strong landfall signal — signs that storms could affect land — for 2012 so far. But residents of vulnerable Gulf coast communities, and energy and oil producers in the U.S. Gulf oil patch, should be wary.

“For 2012, our landfall model predicts slightly below-normal probabilities of landfall from Florida and up the East Coast, with slightly above-normal probabilities in the Gulf,” Crawford said.

Colorado State University forecasters, in their outlook issued on April 4, predicted 10 tropical storms in the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, with four strengthening into hurricanes.

Of those, they said two would become major hurricanes with sustained winds reaching Category 3 or greater status on the Saffir-Simpson intensity scale and powerful enough to cause devastating damage.

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season saw a total of 19 named or tropical storms of which seven became hurricanes, including three major hurricanes.

Irene was the lone hurricane to hit the United States in 2011, but it was first one to do so since Hurricane Ike struck southeast Texas in 2008. Irene was also the most significant tropical cyclone to strike the Northeast since Hurricane Bob in 1991, according to U.S. government forecasters.

(Reporting By Tom Brown; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

For now the program remains in business with repeated short-term extensions, though in 2010 it was allowed to lapse for a few weeks. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is warning of serious consequences if that happens again.

“A lapse in the NFIP has a rippling effect. Property owners are unable to complete their mortgage transactions,” said Dave Miller, associate administrator of the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, the FEMA division that runs the flood program, in an interview on Wednesday.

Federal law requires that homes in designated flood-risk areas have flood insurance before a mortgage can be completed. Because the NFIP is effectively the only flood insurance available in the United States, a lapse in the program means home sales can not close in designated flood areas.

Miller cited estimates from the National Association of Realtors that as many as 1,300 real estate closings a day could be affected by a lapse in the program.

According to informal guidance issued by the Federal Reserve in early 2010, during a lapse period lenders can still make loans on properties that are required to have flood insurance, even if that insurance is not available. Companies that administer flood policies on FEMA’s behalf have said they doubt many lenders would take that advice and proceed with loans.

For now the debate appears to be focused on whether to move ahead with reform legislation pending in the U.S. Senate or to simply reauthorize the existing program.

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, in an April 17 letter to congressional leaders, asked for a two-year reauthorization.

An insurance industry coalition called SmarterSafer.org condemned that request last week, saying it ignored bipartisan support for actual reform.

“The current NFIP is broken and, without real reform, our communities will be far less safe, our environment will be threatened, and the program will remain billions of dollars in debt to U.S. taxpayers,” the group said in a statement.

Other industry groups are reportedly pressing for reform action as well, hoping the Senate will vote on a pending bill to restructure the program after the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelming passed one last year.

“I see it all over the board, it’s uncertain right now where it’s going to go,” FEMA’s Miller said, adding that he was optimistic – an optimism tempered by the fact that he only recently joined the program and is well aware of its difficult history getting extended.

As of Feb. 29, the NFIP had 5.59 million policies in force nationwide, with a total insured value of $1.267 trillion. Those policies would remain in force even if the authorization for the program lapsed.

By Ben Berkowitz
From 2006 to 2010, the NFIP paid out $6.21 billion in losses, according to statistics on the program website.

In other words, according to study author Bryan Reimer, “Just because you have your eyes on the road doesn’t mean you have your mind on the road.”

The research, published last month in Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, cuts straight to the heart of the distracted driving debate. Not only does it show that voice-operated infotainment systems and hands-free phones may not be the fix that automakers and policymakers have hoped for, but it also opens the door for more studies that may find better ways to manage distractions behind the wheel.

Voice Control

Back in December, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) called for an all-out ban on cellphone use among drivers, drawing complaints from industry and consumers alike that such a prohibition would be impossible to enforce and not entirely necessary.

More realistically, NHTSA and automaker trade group Auto Alliance worked on guidelines for what car manufacturers can do to reduce driver distraction. Among their recommendations: Limit the amount of off-road glances, manual inputs and time spent with hands off the wheel, and completely disable such intense visual-manual activities as texting and entering phone numbers or addresses.

So far, most automakers have worked to reduce distraction by replacing touch screens and buttons with voice commands. In the most recent models to hit showrooms, voice-activated infotainment systems such as Ford’s Sync supplanted and supplemented rows of buttons and knobs. (Ford declined to comment on this study, although they did provide support for AgeLab’s research.) According to the MIT study, however, a switch to voice control is far from a panacea.

“Voice applications have nothing to do with where you’re looking, but they can force a huge cognitive load on the driver,” said Reimer. Like the number-repetition task that the Reimer and his fellow researchers gave to their subjects, having a conversation or shouting out voice commands can lead to “tunnel vision” — a distraction that some drivers may not even recognize when their hands aren’t holding a phone or turning a dial.

“Policymakers need to be very aware that it’s the cognitive demand that’s the issue, not the issue of holding a phone,” Reimer said. “Hands-free technology does not make driving and technology safe. It can make it even more problematic when people perceive they’re doing something that’s safer.”

Quantified Distraction

That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s best to ban all in-car communication. Rather, Reimer hopes that the study findings will spur additional research into what levels of distraction are inappropriate while driving.

When the MIT team analyzed its data, it found an interesting and statistically significant result: As the difficulty of the number-repetition tasks increased, so did the cognitive load of the subjects. Reimer didn’t push them to the point of an unsafe level of distraction — there are already enough folks like that on 93 North, after all — but the research does show that being distracted isn’t a binary condition.

This opens up a conversation about just how much a driver can be distracted, and encourages discussions about which risks and tradeoffs are sometimes tolerable and which are never appropriate. “We can begin to quantify things,” he said. “There’s gray in the middle.”

“In this case here, we’ve shown that just repeating a series of numbers increases cognitive load in a way that’s detectable. But is that really dangerous? Probably not,” he said. As those tasks become more difficult, though — or as a phone conversation becomes more involved — it is very possible that distractions can become a threat to safety.

Reimer offered up text messaging as just one example of an action that no driver can competently devote cognitive resources to while safely piloting a moving vehicle. Indeed, texting while driving a truck makes an accident almost 24 times more likely.

Some distractions become less safe depending on the level of cognitive load involved. “A quick phone call that says, ‘Honey, I’m running late because I’m stopping to get a loaf of bread’ is much different than, ‘Honey, I’m late because I’m stopping to see a divorce attorney,’” said Wade Newton, spokesman for the Auto Alliance.

The problem is that drivers don’t know their own limits — and those limits can rapidly change as cognitive load increases and decreases during the course of a drive. “The big question is how to make it so drivers can do the things we know they’re going to do in a safer way,” Newton said. Reimer and Mehler’s study moves toward answering that question, by quantifying the level of distraction at which driving becomes inherently unsafe.

Technology and Responsibility

Perhaps the most interesting application of the the study findings involve future ways to reduce in-car distractions. So far, automakers and policymakers alike have relied on blanket solutions — blocking out navigation systems while the car is in motion or banning text messaging while driving, for example.

Unfortunately, drivers don’t always know their own limits and still willingly engage in distracting behavior, often while unaware of the potential consequences.

If a driver doesn’t somehow flout prohibitions on texting or entering data onto a computer screen, a ban is still a blunt tool for achieving distraction-free driving, and doesn’t address the myriad other distractions a driver may face — from fellow passengers to dashboard lights. The MIT AgeLab research shows that learning more about what specific behaviors indicate increased cognitive load can help further focus a driver’s attention on the road in real time.

The AgeLab’s test car (right) was fitted with sophisticated sensors that made it possible for researchers to analyze a driver’s cognitive load. Reimer envisions cars of the future equipped with similar technology that can instantly recognize when a driver is in over his or her head.

For instance, if a car can sense that a driver is exhibiting that “tunnel vision,” a car could cue the driver to end a hands-free phone call. Even simplifying a dashboard readout during times of high cognitive demand could help remove unnecessary distractions.

“The technology would alert the operator they’re functioning in an area where they’re really not capable,” Reimer said.

For now, though, it’s up to drivers to determine when they’re in over their heads. And it’s up to researchers like Reimer and Mehler to inform policymakers and carmakers alike of the most effective way to minimize distractions.

DMV Commissioner Mike Robertson told The Charlotte Observer that he thinks the increase happened because his agency began cracking down on garages that pass vehicles shortly after they fail at another shop.

About 1.2 million vehicles failed inspection in 2011. That’s about 15 percent of the vehicles registered with the state. The DMV reported about 400,000 failed inspections in 2010.

The DMV said the most common reasons for failing inspection are faulty windshield wipers, stoplights, license plate lights and tires.

A spokesman for Gov. Beverly Perdue said she will review the report amid suggestions that state should abolish inspections or limit them to older vehicles.