September 25, 2023
In Fairbanks, Alaska, the US Forest Service is looking to hire a smokejumper, a person who parachutes out of a rickety airplane to wrangle wildfires that break out far from roads or rivers. Little experience is necessary; the pay starts …
January 31, 2022
McKeel Hagerty’s parents were into wooden boats and saw an unmet need to underwrite them. Hagerty, however, has been a car nut from day one. When the family’s marine insurance business finally began to offer auto policies in 1991, he …
April 29, 2019
The distracted driving report by Zendrive, a traffic-data startup, makes it clearer and clearer each year that millions of Americans can’t stop themselves from talking, texting and livestreaming—yes, even using FaceTime—while driving. The results have been increasingly unsettling, showing that …
October 22, 2018
Like many diligent public servants, Georgia state Representative Ed Setzler enjoys crowing about a nice, tidy highway project. In a Sept. 8 Facebook video, the Republican appeared to be doing just that from behind the wheel of a car. This …
April 24, 2018
Insurance companies are finally putting a price on the risk of distracted driving, and it’s relatively cheap. Last year, a ticket for using a mobile phone while driving added $226 to the average insurance policy, an increase of 16 percent, …
April 10, 2018
If you’re driving right now, it’s far more likely you are reading this on your phone than you would have been a year ago. Despite a harrowing surge in traffic fatalities, American drivers appear to be getting worse at avoiding …
March 13, 2018
In the wait for self-driving technology, cell-phone toting tech bros may have to cede their spot in line to pizzas, Craigslist couches and the mounting ephemera of e-commerce. The future—at least in the near-term—will not only be driverless, but sans …
October 18, 2017
Jennifer Smith doesn’t like the term “accident.” It implies too much chance and too little culpability. A “crash” killed her mother in 2008, she insists, when her car was broadsided by another vehicle while on her way to pick up …
October 5, 2017
The ink on the “total loss” insurance paperwork, like the 2007 Range Rover itself, was still wet when Morgan Moran began trying to buy his vehicle back after Hurricane Matthew last year. The insurance adjuster had declared the vehicle ruined …
October 31, 2016
Self-driving cars are getting closer by the day, but they won’t be coming from hacking phenomenon George Hotz. Hotz, the first person to jailbreak an iPhone and a vagabond of the world’s top tech companies, has scrapped his self-driving project …