Safety features help lower your car insurance rate

A new study finds that having airbags and other safety features installed in your vehicle can go a long way towards lowering your car insurance rate.

The Insurance Research Council reported recently that front and side airbag systems can help lower auto injury insurance claim costs. The organization's study examined a number of closed auto insurance claims from 2007 that involved personal injuries.

As the vehicles in the study got older, they were more inclined to only have seatbelts installed. For example, 80 percent of 1990 models were found to lack airbags, while 82 percent of vehicles from 2007 had both front and side airbags. The vehicles with the airbags were found to have been involved in accidents with lesser injuries and lower claim costs.

"Motor vehicles are becoming safer, and these improvements are having a noticeable impact on the seriousness of injuries and the ultimate cost of auto injury claims. These favorable trends have helped offset some of the pressure caused by the accelerating cost of medical treatment for auto injuries," said Elizabeth Sprinkel of the IRC.

Specifically, the average personal injury protection (PIP) claim for a vehicle without airbags was $6,994, while claims for vehicles with airbags was 32 percent lower, helping to ease upward pressure on an average car insurance rate in the process.

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