Reader question:

I’m getting a new car and they give you the option to pay extra for side impact air bags. If I do this, will I get cheaper rates on my car insurance premium?

Randy

Probably.

Everything depends on the company, but most car insurance companies will give you safe driver insurance discounts when you add safety features to your car, especially when those features are air bags. You don’t necessarily get more of a discount the more safety features you add, but if you make an effort to diminish the possibilities of extreme damage when or if your car gets into a crash and needs collision coverage, then you are going to get rewarded for it by your company with a car insurance discount.

Some people wonder if we even need side air bags. Every car that comes out on the market is so loaded down with safety features that it’s enough to make people wonder if it makes any sense. Can all of that so called safety really save lives, or is it just a gimmick to sell cars? Accidents still happen right? Right, but less do, and the ones that do cause less damage and injury when there are safety features involved, so this trend will probably continue.

At the beginning of the year, crash tests were performed with cars that did not have side impact air bags and then the same type of car that did, to see what the differences were in the results. It came out that they really do work and can save lives. This is especially important for side impacts, which cause most of the fatalities in accidents because they hit at least one passenger or driver head on. Side impact air bags decreases the possibility of both injury and death, and for that reason car insurance companies are rushing to hand out discounts to anybody with these.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.