Whether you’re still practice driving or driving on your own, you and a parent (or other trusted adult) should work together to help you become a safe skilled driver. You should expect and advocate for support in driving from a trusted adult. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Advocate for 65+ hours of supervised driving practice. To make it easy, keep a driving log and follow a driving lesson timeline to ensure that your parent provides you with lots of varied practice while learning to drive and careful monitoring for the first year after licensure.To be successful, it's crucial to create the right learning environment. Here's how.
    
  
• Know what you don’t know. A recent study found that 75 percent of serious teen crashes were due to a critical teen driver error, with three common errors accounting for nearly half of all serious crashes: 
  • driving too fast for road conditions 
  • being distracted 
  • failing to detect a hazard  
    
    

•  Make sure your parent teaches you critical driving skills. Try to accept constructive criticism and ask your parent to teach you the following skills to prevent the three common errors that lead to teen crashes:  
  
  •  speed management – This includes always following the speed limit, as well as knowing when to adjust your speed in congested zones and residential areas, during inclement weather, and on poorly lit roads.
  •  recognizing and avoiding distractions – This means limiting the number of peer passengers, having a no cell phone or electronic device rule, and lowering radio volume.
  •  scanning for hazards – This involves observing the surroundings far ahead of the vehicle and side-to-side so that you have sufficient warning to react and avoid a potential crash. 
    
    
• Develop house rules for your first year of independent driving

- See more at: http://www.teendriversource.org/more_pages/page/get_behind_national_teen_driver_safety_week_ntdsw_/teen#sthash.IRSwmnDm.dpuf

Tornadoes have caused severe and irreparable damage to tens of thousands of Americans and their property in recent years. On top of the physical and emotional fallout, many have also lost their lives as a direct result of a tornado.

Although you can never control the weather or the outcome of a destructive storm, there are steps you can take to help you and your family remain protected in the event of a tornado. Those steps of action begin with knowing fact from myth.

Here are a few tornado truths that could help keep you and those you love safe:

• When indoors, shut all windows and doors. Do not leave them open in an attempt to follow the mythical need to “pressurize” your home because the result would more likely be debris flying through the window and causing severe harm, or wind pressure working to lift the roof off the house from the inside.
• If you are inside your home or other structure, retreat to the lowest level (a basement is ideal) or the room closest to the middle of the home or farthest from windows and doors. Do not seek a “corner” of the structure for your retreat; instead, go to the center-most point, away from windows and anything heavy that could fall on your head.
• If you’re outdoors, find the lowest spot, such as a ditch or dry river bed, and lie flat on your stomach, covering the back of your head with your hands. Do not follow the myth of seeking shelter underneath a bridge or overpass because it could collapse on top of you or large debris and winds could come rushing underneath and potentially sweep you up into the tornado itself.
• If you are in a vehicle, abandon the vehicle and try to find shelter in a structure or outdoors in a low place where you should lay stomach-down and cover the back of your head with your hands. Most importantly, do not attempt to drive away from the storm unless it’s very obviously far away and moving in the opposite direction.
• Do not take shelter near a road or foothill and expect the tornado to miss you. Some myths say that tornadoes will reverse their directions when nearing a road or foothill, but a tornado doesn’t discriminate and will keep on its path.
• Keep head gear handy. Head protection can be the number-one most important factor in remaining protected from flying debris—indoors or outdoors—so know where bike, football, batting, boxing and other helmets are in the house, and make them easily accessible.

If you’re like most people, there are certain items you own that you can’t imagine ever losing — possessions you deeply cherish or those that would be impossible to replace due to the cost of re-purchasing them or simply because they’re irreplaceable.

While your homeowners insurance is invaluable for covering the loss or destruction of many of your belongings (as well as damage to your home’s structure), your policy might provide only partial coverage for your most cherished items.

The good news is that you can still protect the things that matter to you most, even if they’re not fully covered under your homeowners insurance, with a scheduled personal property endorsement that is tailored to meet your specific needs.

Not an easy name, but it can help you sleep better at night
A scheduled personal property endorsement is not something that everyone talks about, but a local Safeco agent can help you determine if it would be a good fit for you. The first step begins with you. Look around your home and make a list of your cherished possessions. Be sure to consider the following:

• Jewelry
• Antiques
• Art
• Collections
• Musical instruments
• Silverware/China
• Autographed items
• Rare or one-of-a-kind items

Once you have taken an inventory, make the time to talk with an agent. They are here to help you determine whether your prized possessions need more coverage than your current policy provides.

Keep in mind that it is wise to complete an inventory every year or so, because it’s easy to acquire new items over time that should be added to a scheduled personal property endorsement. It could be tragic to find yourself in a situation rendering you unable to replace what matters most to you.

You might think you drive just as well at night, but consider this: Even though nighttime driving accounts for just 23% of vehicle miles traveled, more than 50% of fatalities for vehicle occupants 16 and older occur between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., according to the National Safety Commission (NSC).

Because we’re big advocates for safety, we thought it would be helpful to take a look at why night driving is more dangerous, and what you can do to decrease that danger.


 

What’s dangerous about night driving?

1. Decreased vision. We won’t go into all the biological details, but different parts of the eye (such as iris, pupil and retina) work differently at night. Your peripheral vision is actually slightly improved, but it’s more difficult to focus on objects ahead of you. And traveling between well-lit areas and darker roads creates issues as well.
2. Driving too fast for your headlights. Depending on vehicle speed and headlight setting, many people “over-drive” their headlights. That means, by the time they see something on the road, it’s too late to stop in time to avoid it.
3. Impaired judgment. Whether due to drowsiness or the use of alcohol or drugs, it appears that drivers at night often don’t use good judgment. According to the NSC, 66% of fatalities at night involve vehicle occupants who weren’t wearing seat belts.

So what do you do?

Sometimes, there’s no way around driving at night. So here are some tips to help you make it a safe trip.

1. Make sure your vehicle’s lights are in good working condition. And not just headlights, but turn signals, taillights, etc.
2. Avoid speeding. Leave a bigger cushion between you and other cars than you would during daylight hours. Leave yourself more time for the trip.
3. Be more aware of your surroundings. You shouldn’t be using your phone, messing around with the radio or trying to find something on the floor while you’re on the road anyway — and distractions are even more deadly at night.

Of course, if you’re not comfortable driving at night, the best thing is to avoid it altogether if possible. There’s nothing wrong with asking for a ride from a trusted safe driver or waiting for the sun to come out!

The U.S. is home to more than 78 million pet dogs. While your furry friend can be great fun, keep in mind that pet ownership isn't all fetch and Frisbee: Dog bites are a leading cause of doctor and hospital visits, with more than 4.5 million people bitten by dogs each year. Most of the 885,000 bites that require medical attention sadly involve children between 5 and 9 years old, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Dog bites are also a surprisingly common cause of homeowners' insurance claims, with more than one-third of all liability claim dollars paid in 2012, according to a recent statement by the Insurance Information Institute. The CDC says more than 31,000 Americans underwent reconstructive surgery in 2006 as a result of dog bites.

If you're a dog owner, be sure to take your dog to obedience training and teach family members how to properly play with your pet. Games such as fetch are fine, but rough games like tug-of-war may encourage aggression in pets and may lead to biting.

Always check with a dog's owner before approaching an unfamiliar dog—even if it's a friendly looking Fido. Even then, use caution. One out of every five dogs is adopted from a shelter, and that means the potential for past mistreatment and unpredictable behavior. Kirsten Theisen, director of pet care issues for The Humane Society of the United States, cites these facts to consider:

• 80 percent of dog-bite incidents involving children are inflicted by a family dog (30 percent) or a neighbor's dog (50 percent).
• 75 percent of fatal dog bites are inflicted on family members or guests on the family's property.
• 8 percent of dog bites involving adults were work-related, inflicted on such workers as meter readers, postal workers, and home-repair contractors.

After a long, dark winter, spring's bright sun and warm winds are, well, a breath of fresh air. The only downside? All that sunshine spotlights your leaf-filled gutters, cracked sidewalks and the dead plants in last year's flower beds. Dwight Barnett, a certified master inspector with the American Society of Home Inspectors, shared this checklist to help you target the areas that need maintenance so you can get your chores done quickly, leaving you time to go outside and play in the sunshine.

• Check for loose or leaky gutters. Improper drainage can lead to water in the basement or crawl space. Make sure downspouts drain away from the foundation and are clear and free of debris.
• Low areas in the yard or next to the foundation should be filled with compacted soil. Spring rains can cause yard flooding, which can lead to foundation flooding and damage. Also, when water pools in these low areas in summer, it creates a breeding ground for insects.
• Use a screwdriver to probe the wood trim around windows, doors, railings and decks. Make repairs now before the spring rains do more damage to the exposed wood.
• From the ground, examine roof shingles to see if any were lost or damaged during winter. If your home has an older roof covering, you may want to start a budget for replacement. The summer sun can really damage roof shingles. Shingles that are cracked, buckled or loose or are missing granules need to be replaced. Flashing around plumbing vents, skylights and chimneys need to be checked and repaired by a qualified roofer.
• Examine the exterior of the chimney for signs of damage. Have the flue cleaned and inspected by a certified chimney sweep.
• Inspect concrete slabs for signs of cracks or movement. All exterior slabs except pool decks should drain away from the home's foundation. Fill cracks with a concrete crack filler or silicone caulk. When weather permits, power-wash and then seal the concrete.
• Remove firewood stored near the home. Firewood should be stored at least 18 inches off the ground at least 2 feet from the structure.
• Check outside hose faucets for freeze damage. Turn the water on and place your thumb or finger over the opening. If you can stop the flow of water, it is likely the pipe inside the home is damaged and will need to be replaced. While you're at it, check the garden hose for dry rot.
• Have a qualified heating and cooling contractor clean and service the outside unit of the air conditioning system. Clean coils operate more efficiently, and an annual service call will keep the system working at peak performance levels. Change interior filters on a regular basis.
• Check your gas- and battery-powered lawn equipment to make sure it is ready for summer use. Clean equipment and sharp cutting blades will make yardwork easier.

Yep, it's not about you, it's about them.  Life Insurance.  Make sure you're properly covered.  Have a plan, and stick to it.  Need help or have questions? Don't hesitate to call us!