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Photo of 2006 crash of a Toyota Prius near Olympia, Wash. Firefighters have cut off the car's roof and are trying to remove the driver. By Steve Bloom, Daily Olympian, via AP

Hybrid car owners drive their cars more when they aren't commuting to work than those who drive conventional cars, an analysis of insurance records finds. And despite their cars' often nerdy image, Toyota Prius owners tend to rack up just as many traffic tickets. When hybrid cars get in accidents, the repair costs are an average 13% higher than non-hybrids.

Those are some of the findings in the study by a firm called Quality Planning that pores over data for insurance companies. In this case, it looked at the records on 359,309 vehicles covered by multiple insurers across the country over a two-year period through last December. It found that even though hybrid owners may be able to save gas, they eat up the savings by driving more on pleasure trips. Their commute habits are about the same as non-hybrid drivers, but they logged up to 25% more on trips not related to their jobs. They drove an average of 10,500 miles a year when not commuting.

“The additional miles driven by hybrid vehicle owners would seem to offset the net ecological benefit of owning a fuel-efficient vehicle," said Raj Bhat, president of Quality Planning. “What we don’t know is whether owning a hybrid vehicle encourages people to drive more miles each day or take more pleasure trips." The profile of a hybrid driver skews to women, typically older, more affluent, and often urban dwellers. Looking just at Toyota Prius hybrid drivers, Quality Planning found that they tend to get more traffic tickets than average -- 0.38 moving violations per 100,000 miles driven, compared with an overall average of 0.23. But that may be because urban drivers tend to get more traffic citations in general.

When model-year 2008 hybrids crashed, they cost more to fix - an average 13% higher.The highest collision costs were for the Toyota Highlander hybrid and the Ford Escape hybrid. “These findings should be of particular interest to auto insurers. Some currently offer policy discounts on hybrid vehicles. A 25% increase in miles driven or a 30% differential in loss costs is very significant,” said Bhat.

Hybrid car owners drive more and get more traffic tickets, study finds - Drive On: A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive - USATODAY.com

[bozo]

The profile of a hybrid driver skews to women, typically older, more affluent, and often urban dwellers.

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