In a recent blog, Catherine McBreen, managing director of Spectrem Group, describes a terrible event that shook her family to the core: A week before her son was to leave for college, he was driving and hit a bicyclist.
No tickets were issued. The bicyclist survived after spending time in the hospital and later brought a lawsuit. McBreen, like many others, wasn’t aware that her insurance included excess liability coverage, but she was sure glad that she had it.
Breen urges advisors to make sure their clients are adequately insured. “Spectrem’s research showed that two-thirds of investors with a net worth of $15 million-$25 million have excess liability coverage of $5 million or less,” she writes. “That gap in coverage levels could result in a catastrophic loss. Over half of investors with a net worth of between $5 million and $7.49 million have excess liability coverage of $2 million or less.”
While all sorts of tragedies can threaten the emotional and financial well-being of families, bicycle and pedestrian accidents like the one involving McBreen’s son are truly on the rise. Although the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports the total number of U.S. traffic fatalities (37,133) and pedestrian and pedalist fatalities (6,760) were down slightly in 2017 from 2016, the longer-term trend is different.
According to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration and the NHTSA), the number of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities increased by 32% in the ten-year period between 2008 and 2017, the most recent year for which statistics are available. During that same time period, total traffic fatalities decreased by 0.8%. Another comparison: In 2017 pedestrian and bicyclists represented 18.2% of total traffic fatalities compared with 12.6% in 2003.