EDMONTON – Barbara Wellensiek knew her son’s insurance bill would be steep because of his driving record, but when the renewal notice arrived she was shocked to see the annual premium was $104,566.63.“I thought it was a typo,” Wellensiek said today. “I didn’t panic – I thought it was a mistake.”
When she phoned her insurance broker, Access Insurance Group, she got confirmation that the figure on the notice was accurate, the rate having been hiked from $1,300 per month
Towers has all the factors going against him that add up to a high premium, even under the new grid system brought in when auto insurance reforms took effect in 2004.
He’s 19, and has a “tendency to speed,” Wellensiek said.
He got his first car at age 16. His licence was suspended twice. Since May 2005 he has received 10 speeding tickets, and has been in two minor “fender benders” and a rear-ender that totalled his car.
It seems that sitting in the left lane, engine idling, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so you can make a left-hand turn, is minutely wasteful — of time and peace of mind, for sure, but also of gas and therefore money. Not a ton of gas and money if we’re talking about just you and your Windstar, say, but immensely wasteful if we’re talking about more than 95,000 big square brown trucks delivering packages every day. And this realization — that when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall — is what led U.P.S. to limit further the number of left-hand turns its drivers make.Drawing From New Sources The company employs what it calls a “package flow†software program, which among other hyperefficient practices involving the packing and sorting of its cargo, maps out routes for every one of its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make (taking into consideration, of course, those instances where not to make the left-hand turn would result in a ridiculously circuitous route).
Have a burger and chips before getting pregnant and you’re more likely to have a baby boy – whereas a girl is more likely if you eat chocolate or ice cream. It may sound about as convincing as puppy-dogs’ tails, but this is the latest cutting-edge science as reported in New Scientist.
German men are the world’s worst lovers, according to a poll of 10,000 women travellers.They are branded selfish in bed while second-placed Swedes are too quick.