Shopping for a Safe Car

Shopping for a Safe Car

What To Check While Buying New Car:

Walmart Brings One-Stop Shopping to Car Insurance

If you are like most people shopping for a new car, safety ranks high among things you're looking for. Every new car must meet certain federal safety standards, but that doesn’t mean that all cars are equally safe. There are still important safety differences, and some vehicles are safer than others. Many automakers offer safety features beyond the required federal minimums. The following safety features should be considered when purchasing a car:

NEW YORK -- Walmart (WMT) is bringing one-stop shopping to another area: auto insurance.

The world's largest retailer has teamed up withAutoInsurance.com to let shoppers quickly find and buy insurance policies online in real time to cut down costs.

The service is available immediately in eight states -- Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. It will be available nationwide in the next few months.

Shoppers can go to autoinsurance.com or access the site through Walmart's website atwww.walmart.com/autoinsurance.

1. Crashworthiness
   These features reduce the risk of death or serious injury when a crash occurs. You can get a rating of crashworthiness from ourAuto Crash Test tool.
2. Vehicle structural design
   A good structural design has a strong occupant compartment, known as the safety cage, as well as front and rear ends designed to buckle and bend in a crash to absorb the force of the crash. These crush zones should keep damage away from the safety cage because once the cage starts to collapse, the likelihood of injury increases rapidly.
3. Vehicle size and weight
   The laws of physics dictate that larger and heavier cars are safer than lighter and smaller ones. Small cars have twice as many occupant deaths each year as large cars. In crashes involving smaller and larger vehicles, heavier vehicles drive lighter ones backwards, decreasing the forces inside the heavier car and increasing them in the lighter car.
4. Restraint systems
   Belts, airbags and head restraints all work together with a vehicle’s structure to protect people in serious crashes. Lap/shoulder belts hold you in place, reducing the chance you’ll slam into something hard or get ejected from the crashing vehicle. If you aren’t belted, you’ll continue moving forward until something suddenly stops you—often a hard interior surface that will cause injuries. 
   • Shoulder belts are on inertia reels that allow upper body movement during normal driving, but lock during hard braking or in a crash. Belt webbing is stored on the reel, and during a frontal crash any slack in the webbing can allow some forward movement of your upper body. Then you could strike the steering wheel, dashboard or windshield. This problem is addressed in some cars with belt crash tensioners that activate early in a collision to reel in belt slack and prevent some of the forward movement.
   • Airbags and lap/shoulder belts together are very effective. However in some circumstances, a deploying airbag can cause serious injuries and even death. The greatest risk of injury occurs when you are on top of, or very close to an airbag when it starts to inflate. Choose a car that allows you to reach the gas and brake pedals comfortably without sitting too close to the steering wheel. Some cars offer telescoping steering column adjustments that may help.
   • Side airbags are designed principally to protect your chest. They may also keep your head from hitting interior or intruding structures.
   • Head restraints are required in the front seats of all new passenger cars to keep your head from being snapped back, injuring your neck in a rear-end crash. But there are big differences among head restraints. Some are adjustable, and others are fixed. They also vary in height and how far they are set back from the head. To prevent neck injury, a head restraint has to be directly behind and close to the back of your head. Look for cars that have this type of restraint. If the restraints are adjustable, make sure they can be locked into place. Some don’t lock, so they can get pushed down in a crash.
5. Anti-lock brakes
   When you brake hard with conventional brakes, the wheels may lock and cause skidding and a lack of control. Anti-lock brakes pump brakes automatically many times a second to prevent lockup and allow you to keep control of the car. If you were trained to brake gently on slippery roads or pump your brakes to avoid a skid, you may have to unlearn these habits and use hard, continuous pressure to activate your antilock brakes. Anti-lock brakes may help you keep steering control, but they won’t necessarily help you stop more quickly.
6. Daytime running lights
   Daytime running lights are activated by the ignition switch. They are typically high-beam headlights at reduced intensity or low-beam lights at full or reduced power. By increasing the contrast between a vehicle and its backgrounds and making the vehicles more visible to oncoming drivers, these lights can prevent daytime accidents.
7. On the road experience
   Other design characteristics can influence injury risk on the road. Some small utility vehicles and pickups are prone to rolling over. "High performance" cars typically have higher-than-average death rates because drivers are tempted to use excessive speed. Combining a young driver and a high-performance car can be particularly dangerous.

AutoInsurance.com, a division of Fort Lee, N.J.-based Tranzutary Insurance Solutions, a licensed property and casualty insurance agency, was created after Walmart realized there was an opportunity for a quicker service where shoppers can buy and save on car insurance that provides the final price -- with no bait and switch tactics. Walmart says car insurance is among the biggest monthly expenses for customers, and for some, it can outpace health care costs.

In a Tuesday briefing with the media, Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of services for Walmart U.S., said the Bentonville, Ark.-based discounter will be AutoInsurance.com's exclusive retail partner and receive promotion payments in its role as marketer. AutoInsurance.com will earn a commission every time a policy is sold.

"Our customers too often have to settle for auto insurance policies that aren't the best fit and cost more than they want to spend," Eckert said.

The strategy marks Walmart's latest flirtation with insurance marketing and also highlights how the retailer is trying to use its size to expand beyond food and other staples into a one-stop shopping destination as it seeks to bring in more shoppers to its site and its stores. Walmart plans to promote the insurance shopping service in its stores.

Last month, Walmart introduced a new money transfer service that it says will cut fees for its low-income customers by up to 50 percent compared with similar services elsewhere. That service is being rolled out in partnership with Ria Money Transfer, a subsidiary of Euronet Worldwide (EEFT).

Joshua Kazam, founder of AutoInsurance.com and the founder and chairman of Tranzutary, noted that 90 percent of people compare prices online for products and services like airline tickets, but its survey shows that only one in five comparison-shop for auto insurance because it's a complicated process.

Walmart has had a relationship with Kazam, an entrepreneur, and his partners that dates back several years. For example, in 2009 Kazam and his team partnered with Walmart to bring PetArmor, a generic version of a popular flea and tick preventative treatment, to Walmart customers. Kazam founded Velcera, which created the PetArmor brand and was acquired last year by Perrigo (PRGO). But recently, Walmart has been working with Kazam in improving the experience related to insurance products.

In 2012, Walmart tested a program with Tranzutary to sell prepaid MetLife (MET) insurance policies in 217 stores in Georgia and South Carolina. Then last April, it launched a test program in Pennsylvania where customers who purchased policies from AutoInsurance.com reported annual savings on their insurance of $1,168, on average. At the same time, it displayed kiosks in Illinois where shoppers could pick up a saving card that offered a discount on a new auto insurance policy sold through Esurance.

Walmart decided that focusing on a price comparison service was the way to go.

It works this way: customers log on to the site and provide their name, address, date of birth and contact information. They can also have the site retrieve their current auto insurance policy, allowing AutoInsurance.com to automatically fill in the necessary coverage information for an apples-to-apples comparison. The free service offers customers multiple quotes from some of the leading national insurance carriers like Esurance, Safeco, and Progressive (PGR) within minutes.

Customers can choose to either purchase the policy online immediately, speak with a licensed agent at 800-700-7500 or save the information and purchase later.