Advocacy

Beyond our volunteer and philanthropic efforts, Allstate supports communities and customers by speaking out on key public policy issues that affect our industry, the people we serve and the places they live.

Safe Roads

Allstate is deeply committed to the safety of Americans, especially on our roads and highways. To better protect our customers and the public at large, we support stronger laws and public awareness efforts to make safety behind the wheel a priority, thereby reducing driving deaths and injuries.

Of particular concern to us are driving deaths and injuries among young people. These preventable tragedies present a chronic public health epidemic and are the number one killer of teens. One major cause of such accidents is distractions while driving. More than eight in 10 teens use cell phones while driving, and almost half say they've texted and instant messaged while behind the wheel. Yet research shows that texting while driving increases the risk of a crash 23 times. So to keep young drivers and everyone else safer on the roads, Allstate supports laws that ban texting while driving as well as public education efforts to change dangerous behavior.

Allstate also favors stronger federal graduated driver licensing (GDL) standards across the country that reflect sound research on how best to reduce teen driving crashes. Today's patchwork system of varying state teen driving laws fails to fully include all the proven elements of reliable behind-the-wheel training for young drivers. Establishing best practices and minimum standards for state GDL programs would change that by allowing new young drivers to gain experience under supervised and less risky conditions, addressing several major facets of the teen driving problem.

We support efforts in Congress to enact national minimum GDL standards for each state to adopt. The Safe Teen and Novice Driver Uniform Protection (STANDUP) Act would create such standards for young drivers and is the right step toward addressing a public health epidemic. We believe this law will lead to fewer fatalities and injuries on America's highways and roads.

To highlight positive trends and driving safety overall, Allstate publishes and promotes its annual "Allstate America's Best Drivers Report." It ranks America's 200 largest cities in terms of car collision frequency to identify which communities have the safest drivers. The report increases discussion about driving safety, educates drivers and cites the top-ranking cities as examples to the rest of the nation. To view the latest Best Drivers report please visit the Allstate Release Archive page within the Allstate Newsroom section on our website.

Protecting Our Community

Highway safety isn't our only concern. We're also committed to helping Americans strengthen and secure their homes. Natural catastrophes affect everyone — not just the government, insurers or people living in catastrophe-prone areas. To some degree, we all pay a price.

That's why Allstate supports ProtectingAmerica.org, a broad-based coalition that advocates stronger partnerships between local, state and federal governments, as well as the private sector, to better address this issue. By educating the public and policymakers, and offering long-term solutions, the coalition seeks to better prepare and protect our communities and our national economy from the impacts of catastrophes.

Allstate and the coalition believe a comprehensive solution to strengthen financial protection for consumers would establish catastrophe funds at the state and national level, improve prevention and mitigation programs, enhance the relief, response and recovery process, expand consumer education, establish more rigorous oversight and mandate continuous improvement.

Federal Insurance Regulation System

Allstate also supports modernizing the current insurance regulatory system. Companies like Allstate deliver insurance products and services under 50 different sets of regulations in 50 states. This makes it difficult and expensive to develop innovative products for our customers. A national set of rules would drive unnecessary costs out of the system and unleash innovation and competition in the marketplace. More comprehensive oversight also would increase transparency and ensure long-term stability of capital markets.