Posts filed under 'DUI'
I have vivid memories of a DUI accident that I witnessed when I was in my 20’s. 30 years later I can still feel the disbelief that flooded my brain that day as I was crossing the Montana border going north on a four lane highway. I was in the right lane and a semi was in the left lane, side by side northbound, and suddenly, from nowhere came a pickup. He was on our side of the four lane and headed straight toward us, fast. In a few quick seconds I veered off the right side of the road and he hit the semi head on.
I jumped from my car and ran to his truck. The semi driver was dazed but not hurt. As I got to the truck this guy fell out of the door, got up, looked me straight in the face and asked if I could give him a ride home. He had no idea what had just happened.
It happens that way a lot. The person who is blasted out of there mind walks away. Far too many times the people on the other end of the accident don’t. Several year later a friend lost his wife and three children to a drunk driver in New Mexico who was driving the wrong way on the interstate with no lights on. The drunk walked away without a scratch. My friend lost everything that was important to him.
Over half of the traffic fatalities in the US last year were alcohol or drug related. Most of those deaths were not the people on alcohol and drugs.
So, why do life insurance underwriters worry about DUI, and specifically multiple DUI’s? Primarily because it shows a reckless disregard for your own life and for the lives of others. There are two mortality issues they look at. Will you kill yourself in an accident and if you kill someone else, will you die while in prison where the mortality experience is substantially shorter than on the outside.
Most companies, as long as a person responds properly, will allow good rates after a period of time after one DUI. Multiple DUI’s is a different story. If a person has two, they can expect to be required to be sober and attending AA for years before they will be considered for life insurance even at high rates. Three or more and you can just forget about life insurance.
I was looking for statistics about DUI deaths and came across an on line ad for Total DUI, DUI Attorney’s Nationwide. I would offer a link to their website so you could read this one paragraph yourself, but they were advertising how to beat DUI charges, so I will just offer this graphic example of what I have been talking about.
“After 11 previous drunken driving offenses, James Cline of Geauga County was driving his girlfriend’s truck without a license when he killed 18-year-olds Andrew Hopkins and Grace Chamberlain last March. Cline was later sentenced to 38 years in prison for the fatal car accident. Both victims were students at Hiram College, a small liberal arts college in Northeast Ohio.”
Bottom line. People who drink and drive scare underwriters. People who don’t learn from their first DUI conviction really scare underwriters. People like the guy above should scare everyone. How can someone like that be allowed to keep on driving until he kills people?
August 17th, 2007
Clients are always surprised that their alcohol use can be an underwriting issue. Whether a person has been through alcohol treatment, has had a DUI, or just consumes higher than average amounts of alcohol, they present an underwriting challenge on more than one level.
Alcohol abuse carries with it both health and lifestyle issues that, without a doubt, have a mortality risk appropriately attached. When a life insurance underwriter is considering someone who has abused alcohol extensively enough to require treatment, they have to weigh the health issues such as liver damage and the life style issues such as alcohol induced depression and suicide, as well as the tendency toward DUI and the associated dangers inherent to that.
Heavy drinkers are often surprised when they are declined without ever having had a DUI, ever having been through treatment, or for that matter, ever admitting to the agent or the company that they even drink. What they didn’t expect was that, in general, if someone is drinkng excessively, whether there is any serious damage or not to the liver, the liver function tests on their labs will likely be elevated to some extent. When liver functions are elevated that generally will trigger another test that is an alcohol marker. If that comes back positive, you are not an occasional drinker unless you consider life to be the occasion. With elevated liver functions and a positive alcohol marker, I can’t think of any insurance company out there that wants to participate in your insurance.
Generally, as long as a DUI appears to be more reflective of a bad decision than a lifestyle, a good independent agent can find a company that will insure you within a year at very fair rates. Like speeding tickets, the further out you get from a DUI, the better the rates get and when you get 5 years out we can generally get a number of companies that are willing to consider their best rate class. Two DUI’s will present a bigger challenge because it has then passed over into a probable lifestyle issue. Multiple DUI’s is a tough sell anywhere until a person has a track record or an established change in the life style.
As with DUI, the further you are from alcohol treatment, the better the rates. Most companies are very cautious on this as the recurrence of alcohol abuse after treatment is substantial. A good track record and 10 years of demonstrated sobriety is usually what it will take to get back to the best rates.
Bottom line. Don’t try to slide heavy drinking through by just not mentioning it. You are better off admitting your alcohol use and letting your agent shop it. Understand that from a life insurance standpoint, alcohol abuse is treated very seriously and for very good reason.
July 21st, 2007
I am often asked why I need to know someone’s driver’s license number when they are applying for life insurance. “What’s that got to do with it”?
Life insurance companies have found a glance at a motor vehicle report to be helpful in evaluating a person’s lifestyle. Multiple moving violations or perhaps an unadmitted DUI might just point toward a risk factor that might need a closer look.
Most insurance companies aren’t going to go bonkers if you have a couple of tickets that are just marginally over the speed limit, but if they run your MVR and find that, for instance, you have 3 or 4 speeding tickets in the last couple of years, that might raise some eyebrows and rates. The bad news for you folks that drive too fast on a consistent basis is that you will likely pay more for your life insurance for now. The good news is that, just like your auto insurance, the further you get from that last ticket, the better your chances of securing even the best rates available.
DUI is a little different and somewhat the same. You are hard pressed to find insurance companies that will want to make any offers if you are less than two years removed from your roadside attempt to walk a straight line. From 2 to 5 years you will need a good independent agent to weed through all the companies that will make offers and find the best for you. Generally after five years you are back to best rates with a lot of companies………..unless you have a history of more than one DUI. Something about that multiple occurrence thing worries insurance companies, a lot.
Bottom line. Life insurance companies don’t just weigh health risks when evaluating a potential customer. They want to know if your habits are healthy as well.
June 19th, 2007
I just read a blog by Jen Creer on www. thediabetesblog.com about teen using the internet as a resource to self educate about their type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Teens (and adults) found out more about the disease, and how to monitor and control it. They found community in the blogs. Somewhere they could go and didn’t seem out of place.
It occurred to me that along the same line, a great way to open lines of communication with your children would be to challenge them to find a good blog or article on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly basis on a health issue. It could be something relevant to them, but certainly wouldn’t need to be. After all, can educating yourself about any health issue be bad for you. If in their research they found out how they could make lifestyle changes that might keep them from developing coronary artery disease, diabetes, cancer, or high blood pressure, well, that seems like that might be a good thing.
Let’s take that idea a step further. Maybe the child could do research on a health issue and how to avoid it and a parent could take the same topic and study what impact it might have on life insurance. The other parent might research the economics of the issue, how much it might cost if you didn’t make the right choices to avoid it.
Great topics could be covered such as alcohol and drug abuse and DUI. What a great thing when everyone brings their bit of wisdom from their internet study and the family has a quick discussion of the issue.
I’ve talk before about how we, as a society, are sorely lacking when it comes to communication on fincancial and life insurance issues. We have a tendency to dance all around it until a health issue (or a death) drives the reality home in a horrible way. What a great thing it would be if families just started making research and discussion on these and other very important issues a routine way of spending quality time.
From a life insurance standpoint some might see my comments as self serving. More sales if more people talk about it, right?? Well, if you want to lift up a coin and look at the losing side, go ahead. I believe in life insurance for what it does for families. I have delivered the checks and prayed with widows and know that protecting your family is the right thing to do. I know that if I die prematurely my wife will be OK financially.
Not real sure if that coin analogy is as good as it sounded when I wrote it, but again to the point. If you’re a parent, talk to your children. If you’re married, talk to your spouse. Life insurance is one of those topics worthy of discussion, but don’t stop there. Communication is a good thing.
May 8th, 2007
No there’s a couple of items there that are taken very seriously by life insurance underwriters. During an initial interview with a good independent agent they are going to ask about any history of alcohol abuse, treatment for alcohol or drug abuse and any dui’s you may have had. May seem a bit invasive for your first chat with that person, but let’s be honest, these issues, depending on when they happened and how severe the problem was or is, can have a definite effect on mortality.
Several underwriting issues come into play when alcohol is abused. Very often, for those who don’t fess up to being heavy drinkers, the underwriter gets the first hint from elevated liver functions. Liver is working overtime for some reason and one of the most common is the attempt to metabolize alcohol. Very often when elevated liver functions are found the company will run an alcohol marker test which will indicate if a person has driven their liver to distraction with alcohol or if there is some other reason for the elevation.
So, one of the first issues is that of health. If you are doing damage to your liver, then chances are you are putting yourself at risk for other health issues.
Next, and by no means second to the health issues, is the issue of lifestyle and alcohol abuse. Alcohol and drug abuse can both lead to some very poor lifestyle choices that can impact mortality.
And of course DUI speaks for itself. There is the very real potential to kill yourself or someone else if you are drinking and driving. Killing yourself is an obvious mortality issue and ending up in jail for vehicular homicide presents a second issue an underwriter needs to consider. Life insurance companies aren’t real keen on insuring people who may kill themselves or end up in jail. They take special exception to a person with a recent dui that is also a private pilot.
Now the good news. Time does heal. Kind of like traffic violations and your car insurance, the further you are from the last incident, the better the chances of getting good rates. So, given time most companies will allow that DUI to melt away. Do it more than once and it won’t melt near as fast though.
Alcohol and drug abuse and the ensuing treatment also can be insured after some time. Companies do like to see that you have sought professional help and they also like to see preventive measures such as being a member of AA or NA.
Given enough time, any of these issues can get all the way back to best rates. Check with a good independent agent if any of these issues are in your past.
April 11th, 2007
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