State Farm Dangerous Intersection Essay

Words: 1934
Pages: 8

>cases
State Farm: Dangerous Intersections
>Abstract
State Farm, the nation’s largest auto insurer, distributed a list of the 10 most dangerous intersections in the United States based on crashes resulting in claims by its policyholders. What started as a study to reduce risk turned into an ongoing study that directs a major public relations effort: State Farm provides funds for communities to further research their dangerous intersections and initiate improvements based on the research. This case tells you how the State Farm Dangerous
Intersections initiative got started and how it is done. www.statefarm.com

>The Scenario
State Farm Insurance has a rich history of proactive safety involvement in auto and appliance design to
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“While some in the media claimed we had ‘hit a home run’ with the program, we quickly learned that there was a lot more at stake than we had anticipated in generating goodwill with transportation engineers,” indicated
Nepomuceno. “This is, after all, a traffic safety program and we would not achieve that goal without having the cooperation of the traffic and transportation engineering community. First, while initially they lauded us for the attention our listing brought to traffic concerns, we and they soon discovered that the spotlight generated demand for immediate solutions, solutions that they often didn’t have

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Marketing Research, 1/e, Cooper/Schindler

State Farm: Dangerous Intersections

budgets to implement. Also, from their perspective, not all accidents are the same; locations with accidents that result in injuries and death should be given more attention. Some jurisdictions were upset that we didn’t consider intersection volume and we didn’t include accident rate data.1 The fact that the State Farm grants were intended to study the intersection more completely wasn’t always seen as a solution to their immediate problems.”
To include accident severity, State Farm needed a measurement system for classifying accidents. For the 2001 study, which used 1999 and 2000 accident data, State Farm calculated a median property damage accident payout (approximately $1,700).