Automobile insurance covers: 1. Fire or explosion 2. Transportation, i.e., derailment and collision 3. Theft 4. Damage by fire to personal effects carried upon the car 5. Damage to other property by being in collision with the automobile insured—known as property damage 6. Damage to the automobile insured by being in collision with some other object 7. Loss of life or injury to the occupants of the car and legal liability for expenses in connection therewith 8. Loss of life or injury to others and legal liability for expenses in connection therewith.
When one considers this list of hazards, it is evident that the charge must be proportionate to the risk as sumed. It must be borne in mind, however, that the use of these vehicles is equivalent to permitting steam engines to run on the streets. We should at once recognize that a high rate of insurance would be required to cover such a hazard. An examination of the daily papers shows the steady toll in the loss of lives, machines, and injury in other forms, which must be allowed for in this type of insurance.
10. Plate glass insurance.—The breakable nature of glass might alone seem enough to prevent the de velopment of an insurance company to take care of this risk. Plate glass insurance is now, however, a very substantial business. It originated in this coun try in 1868, when the New Jersey Plate Glass Insur ance Company was organized. When only small panes of glass were manufactured there was but little demand for this type of insurance, but as the demand came for large pieces of plate glass and the value of a single pane increased, some form of protection be came a necessity.. The growth of the business may be ascertained by comparing the premiums in 1874, which were $18,000, with those of today, which amount to $5,000,000.
It is estimated that there are at least 400,000 store fronts insured under plate glass policies. The busi ness differs from possibly all others in that most of the losses are not settled by cash payments. The com
pany replaces the glass, and for this purpose main tains warehouses at central points, or makes arrange ments with jobbers for handling the losses.
The causes of breakage number about one hundred. Stones and the small boy are accountable for about 75 per cent of all the losses. There are certain me chanical features, such as the settling of a building, which may cause a loss; or the glass itself may be im properly set in the sash and the undue strain may cause it to break.
The cost of replacement varies. In the metropoli tan centers the contracts with the jobbers can be made to fair advantage and even large losses can be quickly replaced; but away from the larger centers, espe cially if the glass is of unusual size, the cost runs up to comparatively large figures. This cost of re placement naturally is a very important matter to take into consideration in writing the insurance.
The risks assumed cover also the show-cases in stores. These are often damaged by objects placed on them for display. Church windows are in a spe cial class. If the window, as is quite likely, was made in one of the large cities, but placed in a church in a distant part of the country, the cost and expense are duly increased accordingly. The windows above the first floor are seldom insured, since they are con sidered outside of the zone of danger. This view, however, has changed since the noted explosion and fire in July, 1916, at Black Torn Island in New York Harbor. The loss was the largest from a single disaster in the history of the plate glass insur ance business, and incidentally it gave the business an amount of advertising which it perhaps could not pos sibly have received in any other way.
The fact that so fragile a thing as glass can be suc cessfully insured reveals the possibilities in the field of insurance for many types of risks which are now considered outside the scope of that business.