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Baby, It's Still Cold Outside  Scott Spencer with Best Review's Insurance Magazine highlights the importance of protecting your home and not hibernating during the winter season. The following highlights can help protect your home and keep you prepared: - Plumbing inside and out should be protected from deep freeze to avoid damaged pipes and potential floods in the home. Pipes should either be insulated or have wall insulation surrounding them.
- Exterior Sprinker systems should not be forgotten. Professionals can winterize the sprinkler systems by removing excess water that can lead to a burst pipe.
- Exterior spigots should be turned off and drained.
- Wood buring fireplaces and flues should be cleaned regularly. Approximately 14,000 house fires each year are a result of flamable creosote built up.
- Easy access to the home, along with house numbers being visible from the street will help responders in the event of an emergency.
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Spotlight on Teen Driving  Any parent with a teen driver in the household can voice the stresses of having a new driver. Teen driver safety and preventative measures can prepare your teen while out on the road. Statistics highlight other teen passengers, nightime driving, technology and inexperience can be at fault for most accidents involving teen drivers.
As the number of teen passengers increase, fatal crashes among 16 and 17 year old drivers are more likely to involve a single vehicle, speeding, and driver error. According to Cooper, Atkins, & Gillen, 2005, restriction of passengers by California law have indicated positive effects with a 38% reduction of 16 year old accidents in which teens were injured or killed.
Inexperience with nightime driving is a contributing factor too. Lower visibility, being in a vehicle with other teen passengers, fatigue, and alcohol and/or drug use can effect driving ability for young teens that are unexperienced behind the wheel.
Talk with your teens about the importance of developing their skills before getting behind the wheel. Gradual exposure to increasingly challenging driving tasks will prepare them and play an important role in developing the skill of driving.
Teen Driving. (2010). National Safety Counsel, http://www.nsc.org/
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Your Identity Belongs to You. Protect It!
The number of identity theft cases increased 22 percent to 9.9 million in 2008. Crimes of opportunity, such as stolen wallets, represented 43 percent of cases, compared to 33 percent in 2007. Women are 26 percent more likely to be victims of identity theft, reporting a higher incidence of lost or stolen information during purchases in stores. Only 11 percent of identity theft cases are due to an involved amount of online access. There are several steps that you can take to protect yourself from identity theft. If your identity is compromised, lessen the amount of damage by taking the following measures:
- Call your credit card companies immediately. Explain what happened and ask where to send a copy of the police report.
- Call and make a report to the police. Make several copies of the police report.
- Complete a Federal Trade Commission Theft Affidavit and FTC report. Call 877-ID-THEFT to request the forms.
- Call your bank and they can place an alert on your driver's license and social security, along with placing a freeze on your bank account.
- Call fraud units of credit report agencies: Experian, Equifax, and Transunion.
Click the following links to be taken directly to the credit reporting agencies:
Experian
Equifax
Transunion |
