By John Wolford, Director of Vendor and Client Services, CEI

If you seem to notice that collision repairs are costing more than they used to, you’re right.

According to CCC Information Systems, a source of data for the auto insurance industry, since the end of 2008 the average cost to repair a damaged vehicle rose more than 13%, from $2,399 to $2,766 in 2015.

What’s the cause? Greg Horn, a vice president at Mitchell International, another provider of auto insurance claims data, attributes most of the increase to the rising cost of parts. “Even when adjusted for inflation,” Horn wrote in Mitchell’s latest report, “we found that new, popular passenger cars do cost more to repair than they did five years ago. Despite multiple variables, including the cost of…service hours, parts has had the highest impact on collision repair costs overall.”

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By Janice Sutton

VisionTrack, a UK in-vehicle CCTV specialist, brought its cutting-edge 3G telematics camera to market back in January. Capable of transmitting a ten-second clip of a road incident using only 350kB of data and reporting information on speeds, location and G-force, Managing Director Simon Marsh says the VT2000 is the future for fleets looking to increase safety and reduce costs.

Fleet Management Weekly headed across the pond to talk with Simon about the importance of this technology and why he feels telematics cameras are the ‘Holy Grail’ in camera technology.

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By Mike Cieri, MSIR, Vice President of Mardac Consultants

Writing a good vision statement isn’t difficult. Think about what your business does and what, in an ideal world, you would like it to do and how you would like to appear.

A vision statement focuses on the potential of the organization, or what it intends to be. In other words, future-based, and are meant to inspire and give direction to the employees of the company, not anyone outside of the company.

Consider the services and characteristics that your company provides, then imagine how it would be if you provided the very best version of them possible. List those visions, and incorporate them into a brief statement that gives a good overview of the kind of image you want to represent.

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Wholesale used vehicle prices increased for the third consecutive month in June, resulting in wholesale prices at their highest level in four years.

“Despite the second quarter’s uptick in pricing, there’s no doubt that the overall long-term trend for wholesale pricing is still down,” said Tom Webb, chief economist for Cox Automotive. “With this in mind, the recent rise in pricing should be taken advantage of now, as well as appreciated, given that the gains will likely raise the floor to which prices will fall in this cycle.”

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The New York Times

Slowpokes, beware: More states are cracking down on drivers who dawdle in the left lane.

While all states require slow-moving vehicles to keep to the right, laws that went into effect in Tennessee this year, Indiana last year, Georgia in 2014 and Florida and New Jersey in 2013 are setting harsher penalties for dawdling drivers.

The new penalties, proponents say, are aimed at reducing congestion, frustration and accidents.

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Forbes

When 20 automakers announced this spring they would include Automated Emergency Braking Systems as standard equipment in all cars, they effectively standardized autonomous vehicle technology, an expert said in Chicago Monday.

Currently offered as an option on some cars, automated braking systems use many of the same components as fully autonomous vehicles, said Jim Barbaresso, national practice leader for intelligent transportation systems at the infrastructure design firm HNTB.

So as they become standard in all cars, the cost of autonomous technology will drop.

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Los Angeles Times

As the driverless car gets closer to reality, so too does the dilemma of how to insure the car and its owner.

The auto insurance industry faces upheaval in the next 25 years as the migration to autonomous safety features — and ultimately a self-driving car — shifts more of a car’s accident risk from the driver to the vehicle, analysts said.

The number of accidents is expected to drop sharply because currently more than 90% of accidents are caused by driver error. That could lower insurance bills for consumers.

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By Mike Sheldrick

Now that cars have become rolling laptops — or tablets, or smartphones, take your pick — it’s becoming increasingly clear that automakers have yet to get a handle on fully protecting their products from hackers.

In the latest incident, a car thief equipped with a laptop was able to steal a Jeep Wrangler. Hacking has become the 21st century’s carjacking.

This is just the latest in a series of worrisome incidents over the last couple of years. The most unnerving might have been the incident where a couple of hackers demonstrated that they could remotely penetrate a Jeep’s control system, and drove it into a ditch — just to show that it could be done.

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Detroit Free Press

I have a lot of conversations about advanced technology vehicles and alternate fuels. About half of them end somebody saying, “Sure, fuel cells sound great, but who can live with a car that needs special fuel you can only get at a few stations?”

So you can imagine that when somebody who does exactly that e-mailed me, I wanted to talk.

“I love it, and I feel like I’m part of the solution” to climate change, said Mark Mobley of Garden Grove, Calif. “I went from a 2005 Corolla to the Mirai. I skipped the whole hybrid step and went from a car with roll-up windows to all this new technology. People stop me in the grocery store parking lot to talk about it.”

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USA Today

Summertime is when Americans take their cars on family road trips. For auto thieves, it’s just time to take cars.

July and August are the months when motorists are at greatest risk of having their car stolen, according to anti-vehicle-theft device manufacturer LoJack.

“Vehicle theft is a very expensive crime, with the cost of stolen vehicles pegged at more than $4.1 billion — that’s billion with a ‘B,’ ” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a statement. “And July is one of the months when more cars are stolen than any other month.”

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