Many factors were identified in the lower number of traffic fatalities, including:

– Fewer miles driven. Americans drove 1.2 percent fewer miles in 2011 than in the year before, per the NHTSA.
– Safer vehicles. According to Rebecca Lindland, director of automotive research for IHS, Inc., higher seatbelt use and more, and better-designed airbag systems as well as vehicles that are re-designed to keep people alive in crashes are all included in this category.

Lindland also said that there would have been even fewer accident-related deaths if distracted driving hadn’t been involved.

NHTSA hasn’t yet released numbers on distracted driving fatalities from 2011, but it said that there were 3,092 people killed in crashes that were affected but such behavior, representing 9.4 percent of all fatalities that year.

So far, 37 of the 50 United States have banned any use of the keyboard (texting) on mobile phones or other devices while driving, while ten have also banned the use of handheld phones at all.

While there’s never a direct correlation in overall traffic statistics and national insurance rates, risk of a crash is always part of the algorithm used to determine auto insurance rates.

In other hurricane-related news, we’ve heard from the folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that because last year’s Hurricane Irene caused more than $15 billion in damage and the deaths of 49 people, the name is being retired from the storm name list.

The list is actually two lists, one of male names, one of female names, which are assigned to significant storms in alternating-gender alphabetical order. Storm names are reused every six years, unless they cause significant damage or a high number of casualties, in which case – like Irene – they are retired from use. Irene is the 76th such retirement from the Atlantic list since 1954.

The official retirement came on Friday, April 20th, and NOAA says the decision was made by the World Meteorological Organization’s hurricane committee. It will be replaced by the name Irma.

Beginning Friday, and continuing through the weekend, those counties experienced damaging hail, flooding, strong straight-line winds, and tornadoes, and in the hardest-hit areas, among them the city of Woodward, damage assessments are still under way.

Under Governor Fallin’s Executive Order, state agencies may make emergency purchases or acquisitions in order to speed the delivery of resources to affected localities. As well, the declaration is the first official step in the process of requesting assistance from the Federal government, if such aid is deemed necessary.

In a statement to the press, the governor said, “My thoughts and prayers go out to those families who have lost loved ones or seen their homes destroyed. The state of Oklahoma is currently doing everything it can to provide relief to the communities in the path of last night’s storms and tornadoes. We will continue to work to provide every bit of assistance that we can in the coming days.”

Most local insurance companies are running special hotlines for people affected by the storms.

One such debate is happening in the state of Hawaii, where, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser says, workers and their advocates are claiming that injured employees in the Aloha state can’t be evaluated fairly when employers and/or insurance companies are hiring the doctors who perform exams.

Specifically, the grievance goes, the system is considered unfair because it allows employers or their health insurance carriers to select doctors who will deliver independent medical exam results that allow companies to challenge workers’ claims.

On the other side of the issue, insurers and the companies that carry insurance maintain the that the system is fair, and that it prevents excessive costs or abuse of coverage.

Typically, the doctors who conduct independent exams are hired to provide opinions when there is disagreement over whether or not an injury is work-related, or whether proposed treatment is both necessary and reasonable.

Legislators in Hawaii had been debating a bill requiring workers and employers to agree on the selection of physicians in such cases, but the measure died in the state Senate last week.

It’s precisely for this reason that three Indiana cities (Elkhart, Fort Wayne, and South Bend) asked for – and have received – grants worth $2.3 million to clean up lead from homes considered to be at-risk, to train workers in lead safety, and to develop public awareness programs about lead poisoning in children.

John Grant, director of HUDs Office of Healthy Homes and Lead hazard Control, said that grants like these demonstrate the importance of having healthy homes.

Each of the cities will be using part of the funds to clean up housing units: 350 in South Bend, 300 in Fort Wayne, and 140 in Elkhart.

How does GPS affect insurance rates? Well, when insurers calculate premiums, one of the factors they consider is the distance to the nearest fire station. Traditionally, that determination has been made using maps, but recently, maps have been eschewed, in favor of more accurate measuring systems.

Because of this, some policies that were originally based on property being within a specific rating area (typically five miles away from a fire department for the best pricing) are now being rewritten because those properties are found to be outside the premium pricing area. Since more distance means that it takes longer for the fire department to arrive, insurance companies perceive a greater risk and charge more.

What can North Carolina homeowners do? They can petition the state insurance department, or they can speak to their insurance agent, but unless the state disallows the use of GPS, rates are likely to continue to change based on new numbers.

The National Weather Service, Read pointed out, already issues forecasts for daily weather that are about a week out, but so far, no one is doing so with hurricanes, possibly because panicking about a possible storm could do more harm than good.

“There is plenty of time to recover from a bad decision to play golf on Saturday when it’s Monday; it’s not going to kill you,” Read explained. “If you start moving nursing home patients at seven days (ahead) you could kill them.” He added that while the Hurricane Center does issue five-day forecasts on big storms, they’re not ready to begin issuing seven-day forecasts, and won’t be until there is more confidence in their predictions.

Even so, Read stressed, predictions and warnings are useless if people don’t listen. He told the conference members, “The biggest challenge is to crack the denial. If you haven’t cracked the ‘it won’t happen to me’ thought process, you can do everything else right and they are going to say it won’t happen to me and not do it. If you can get past the denial, the rest of it is not as difficult as you think.”

He also said that there is a definite window for using actual storms as teaching tools. Using last year’s Hurricane Irene, which caused $7 billion in damages and killed 41 people, as an example, he said, “We will have about a five-year window when people are teachable from Irene, and if nothing else happens. I used to think if you were hit once you were good for a generation.”

Research has shown, however, that after a mere five years, memories are softened, and storms don’t seem as bad as they actually were.

Meanwhile, while NOAA doesn’t release it’s predictions for the Atlantic Hurricane Season until May, Read says that early indicators point to an average season, with around eleven named storms, as opposed to last year’s nineteen. He added a caveat to that, however, cautioning that a forecast issued this early is likely to be incorrect.

“My guys don’t think seasonal forecasts have any meaningfulness,” Read said, adding that his organization is focused on warning people, not on predicting weather. As well, he pointed out, the relatively quiet season twenty years ago also included Hurricane Andrew, which caused 26 deaths and $25 billion in damage in south Florida.

Our prediction? If you live anywhere near a coastline, you need to spend time BEFORE hurricane season making sure your homeowners insurance and additional endorsements covers you for wind, rain, and flood damage.