Auto Insurance Quotes Through the Ages

Auto Insurance Quotes Through the Ages

Or, Insurance Isn't as New as You Think It Is!

How long would you say companies have been handing out auto insurance quotes? Fifty years? Sixty? Most of us tend to think of auto insurance as a relatively new invention, directly related to the fact that today's vehicles move considerably faster (and through much more crowded conditions) than the ones that cruised city streets back in the early 1900's.

It may come as a surprise to discover that auto insurance in the U.S. has been around almost as long as cars have been driven along city streets. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, all those other drivers weren't as stupid as we thought!

Cars: A History

For those of you who aren't up on your vehicular history, here are the highlights. Cars as we know them (more or less) have been around since the 1800s, when a Frenchman living in Paris by the name of Etienne Lenoir patented the first practical gas engine. Those early engines were dramatically different from the ones we drive today; however, it set the stage for the development of the Ford Model T.

The Ford Model T was produced by the Ford Motor Company from 1908 to

The Ford Model T was instrumental in giving birth to the auto insurance industry.

1927. It was the Model T that made automobiles popular in the U.S., because it was the first car that middle class Americans could actually afford. By the 1920s, the Model T Ford only cost $290-the rough equivalent of $3,258 in today's society.

You pay almost twice that for a used car today. I wonder if we could talk the automobile industry into checking their history and following in Ford's footsteps…

Despite the relatively low cost of the Model T, it didn't take long for people to realize that something had to be done to protect drivers from the huge financial risk they were taking when they hopped behind the wheel.

The Birth of Auto Insurance Quotes

Home insurance has been around since the 1700s, insuring companies against shipping losses. Health insurance first made an appearance back in the 1800s. It wasn't a stretch to extend that protection to include America's new favorite form of transportation-the car.

Massachusetts was the first to make liability insurance mandatory with the passing of the Compulsory Liability Insurance Statute in 1927. That made all parties financially responsible, and required that all drivers obtain auto insurance quotes and pay their "premium" to protect themselves from the financial impact of being involved in an accident. By the 1940s, and the end of WWII, most states had mandatory insurance laws.

"American insurance laws created an auto accident compensation system based on personal responsibility that simply extended traditional insurance legal principles embodied in tort law to a new technology: the auto" (as quoted from "A History of Automobile Insurance", Random History and Word Origins for the Curious Mind).

See? Auto insurance isn't as new as you thought! So the next time you go shopping for auto insurance quotes, think about all the drivers that have been there before you and take the time to be thankful they had the foresight to launch the automobile insurance industry in the first place.

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