Thursday, August 29, 2013

Thursday: an insurance statistics question

How often do two cars from the same family run into each other?  I feel like this should be a probability question, but I'm not really sure how to mathematically phrase it.  Ben and I often end up in the same place after work, leave at the same time, and follow each other home.  So our chances of getting into an accident with each other are really pretty good.

But mathematically speaking, what would you compare it to?  Getting into an accident in general?  Seems like it would be pretty small because there are so many non-family accidents.  Getting into an accident vs not getting into an accident when following Ben home?  How would you measure the times we didn't get into an accident?

Anyway, a fun thing to ponder.

1 comment:

Dee said...

Anecdotally (from spending a few years in claims), it's not unheard of, but also not common. Maybe one every few hundred claims I took? (and of course I only took a small fraction of the total claims made.)

Of same-family accidents, it was much more common for one person to back into the other person's parked vehicle than, say, for one to rear-end the other while following.

Not sure how to represent all this mathematically, but hey.