----- Forwarded Message -----
Mr. McMillan,
TDI is not aware of any Texas statutes regulating the content of auto insurance commercials.
This appears to be a matter for federal review. We suggest you follow up with the federal contacts listed in your email.
Thank you,
Marilyn Devine
Commissioner Ombudsman IV
Government Relations
Texas Department of Insurance
Phone: 512-676-6605
Email: Marilyn.Devine@tdi.texas.gov
From: John McMillan <mcmillanj@att.net>
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2020 8:47 PM
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Subject: Fw: 11-25-20 restrictions on outrageously flippant TV commercials by auto insurance companies
ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown or unexpected emails.
I would appreciate a reply note from the Texas Department of Insurance about the legal issues and moral issues raised by this (below) e-mail letter of mine to President-Elect Joe Biden that's focused on alleged impropriety by several American auto-insurance companies through outrageously-flippant
TV commercials they sponsor in Texas and elsewhere in the USA.
Best Wishes,
from John Kevin McMillan of Austin, Texas.
John Kevin McMillan
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: John McMillan <mcmillanj@att.net>
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Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2020, 08:19:06 PM CST
Subject: 11-25-20 restrictions on outrageously flippant TV commercials by auto insurance companies
November 25, 2020
Dear President-Elect Joe Biden,
I am very grateful for your refreshingly serious and substantive and factually-minded approach to governance. Our nation is very fortunate that your great expertise at developing and implementing public policies guiding our entire nation will soon be reflected fully through your first term of office that begins on January 20, 2021.
As a strong supporter of yourself and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, I urge you to please ask the U.S. Congress or the Federal Communications Commission of the U.S. Government to approve either a new law or new FCC regulations that impose additional restrictions on the content of commercials by auto-insurance companies, accompanied by FCC-imposed bans or fines on auto-insurance companies that defy those new regulations.
Among those proposed restrictions might be: a federal requirement that each and every television commercial for motor-vehicle insurance must devote at least 10 or 20 seconds to providing a driver safety tip aimed at helping to reduce the accident rate on roadways, along with a brief factual explanation about why that safety tip can be a life-saver for many Americans.
GEICO --- which originally in 1936 reportedly provided auto insurance exclusively to federal- government employees and their families --- in recent years has been a dubious pioneer in outrageously irresponsible, flippant, sadistic, blood-pressure-raising, irrelevant-content television auto-insurance commercials.
I maintain very emphatically that TV commercials about auto insurance should NOT be "comedy entertainment productions" that invite viewers to smile or chuckle or laugh delightedly at motor-vehicle accidents that occur on the television screen.
Unfortunately, and very tragically, GEICO's hideously-perverse TV commercials have been imitated and copied in a shameless manner by numerous insurance-industry companies--making them very blameworthy as well.
I maintain that the alarmingly high motor-vehicle accident rates throughout much of our nation reflect the brainwashing of American motorists by insurance-industry commercials which suggest that accidents are inevitable, accompanied of course by the "you're covered by our insurance company, so don't worry" message from those insurance companies.
In all too many of the accidents in our nation, one or more of the drivers is charged with a crime in connection with that accident or their conduct immediately after the accident. "I was duped and led astray by 'reckless driving' guidance from our auto-insurance companies, through the notoriously flippant TV commercials they sponsor," a reckless-driving defendant in a court of law in the United States might well declare to the judge during as courtroom proceeding.
President-Elect Biden, an estimated 95 percent of all motor-vehicle accidents in the United States occur because of an error behind the wheel by one or more motorists driving a vehicle.
I maintain that auto-industry-brainwashed American motorists are significantly harmed from being led astray into believing that their time behind the steering wheel on the roadway is a very cheerful or funny or chatty inconsequential event. This reprehensible nationwide flippancy about driving a motor vehicle adds to the millions of dollars of expenses incurred by American society---and by auto-insurance companies---from traffic accidents occurring throughout our nation.
Thank you, President-Elect Biden, for giving full consideration to this request for increased regulation of the allegedly-criminally-callous auto-insurance industry in this very tangible and specific way.
Sincerely and Best Wishes,
John Kevin McMillan, a former GEICO customer and former motorist in Austin, Texas, who earlier this century complained politely to GEICO representatives on the telephone that I was appalled by the outrageously cynical flippancy of GEICO's television commercials.
My current policy with Allstate, I need to emphasize, is strictly an apartment-insurance policy referring strictly to my current rental-apartment unit at Pebble Creek Apartments in northeast Austin; I myself do not own a motor vehicle---nor do I own any real-estate property anywhere in the entire world.
My solo-occupancy efficiency-apartment-unit rental-home address ever since June 21, 2019:
Pebble Creek Apartments (a Belco Equities-affiliated complex), 8805 North Plaza Drive, Bldg. 17 (northeastern corner of my complex), Apt. 2418 (a second-floor, eastward-facing unit), Austin, TX 78753.
Home phone: (512) 342-2295.
Cell phone: (512) 993-7305.
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John Kevin McMillan
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