Accidents into commercial, public and retail buildings occur more than 60 times per day in the United States, resulting in as many as 500 fatalities and more than 4,000 serious injuries annually.
The cost of these accidents to the insurance industry runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars per year, and is climbing.
The Storefront Safety Council has collected data on nearly 10,000 incidents over almost five years. These are referred to as “storefront crashes” because such a high percentage fit into that category. Through 2016, data collection efforts produced the following results:
|Cost of crashes to insurers
The costs of these accidents are born largely by insurers. The driver's insurance (if the driver is insured at all) covers the first portion up to policy limits, then the business owner or the property owner's insurance kicks in up to the policy limits. After that, lawyers are called in to cover the costs of claims for additional damage, business interruption and injuries. Unfortunately, there has been a substantial increase in the dollar value of claims (both settlements and verdicts) over the last several years.
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