PART III AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE, FIDELITY AND SURETY BONDING, TITLE INSURANCE, CREDIT INSURANCE, AND MISCELLANEOUS FORMS OF PROPERTY INSURANCE CHAPTER XXVIII AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE Extent and General Nature.1-No other form of insurance has had so remarkably rapid a development as automobile insurance. Scarcely recognized among the miscellaneous kinds of insurance fifteen years ago, its growth has been almost as astonishing as the increasing use of the automobile itself. At the close of 1920 there were approximately 9,000,000 cars registered in the United States, or about one for each third "statistical family." During the same year 424 insurance companies wrote automobile insurance of some kind, with an aggregate premium income of about $185,000,000. Automobile insurance comprises five distinct types of coverage, namely, those pertaining to public liability, property damage, collision damage, fire and transportation hazards, and theft. Public liability insurance is transacted almost exclusively by casualty companies, and the fire, transportation and theft coverages almost entirely by fire and fire-marine companies. The property and collision damage forms are written by both types of companies, casualty companies probably being the most important with respect to the first type, and fire and fire 1 The reader is also referred to the chapter on "Automobile Insurance" in Riegel and Loman's "Insurance Principles and Practices."' For rules, rates, list prices, and symbols, relating to the various types of coverage, the reader is referred to (1) the "Automobile Insurance Manual for Fire and Transportation, Theft, Collision, and Property Damage," effective May 1, 1922; and (2) the "Condensed Rate Pamphlet" of the "1922 Automobile Casualty Manual," containing public liability, property damage and collision rates for private passenger and commercial automobiles, effective April 15, 1922. |