person was fishing or processing fish. Even allowing for overlapping, 

 it is most likely that as much as 6o percent of accidents in New 

 England and 50 percent in California may have occurred during 

 activities other than fishing and fish processing. Rough seas, 

 resulting in falls or injuries, accounted for about 2k percent of 

 accidents in New Englajid and 23 percent in California; injuries 

 caused while working on equipment, but not while fishing, 

 represented 12.8 percent of accidents in New England and 13-2 

 percent in California; eind injuries caused while working on the 

 boat or loading and vmloading equipment represented 8.3 percent 

 in New England and 13-2 percent in California. Negligence and 

 Intoxication were sometimes cited as causes of accidents. 



2. Severity of protection and indemnity insurance accidents . 

 In table l6, claims for accidents are distributed by amount of loss 

 paid. Petty claims of no more than $250 each accounted for 70 per- 

 cent of losses and small claims of no more than $500 for 80 percent 

 of losses in New England, but represented only 7-3 percent and 11.9 

 percent of all paid losses, respectively. In California, small 

 claims of no more than $500 accounted for only about 40 percent of 

 claims but made up only 2 percent of all paid losses. Contrastingly, 

 only 2.2 percent of clsdms in New England included payments of more 

 than $5*000 but they represented 52.2 percent of all paid losses. In 

 California, these percentages were 21.3 and 82.5, respectively. The 

 reader should remember the remarks made previously about petty hull 

 insurance claims. 



The importance of personal injury claims as against sickness 

 claims is further illustrated in the data shown in table 17- 

 Accidents involving personal injury were not only more frequent 

 but also more costly. The average amount per claim for personal 

 injury was $709 in New England — three times larger than the $231 

 average per claim for sickness- -and represented ^6 percent of all 

 paid losses. In California, loss per claim for sickness was 

 larger than for personal injviry, but accidents of the latter kind 

 accounted for 91 percent of all paid losses. 



With the exception of multiple injxxries, the amount per claim 

 for hand injuries was $1,029 in New England — almoot twice as large 

 as claims for body and head injuries — and 28 jjercent larger than 

 claims for foot injviries (table 17 ). It may be observed that the 

 reverse relationship prevailed in California where the amount per 

 claim for hand injuries was smaller than for body and much smaller 

 for foot injuries. The amount per claim, however, was $4,120, on 

 the average, in California, about six times as large as the $709 

 average per claim in New England. The severity of hand injuries 

 in New England can be observed through the fa^t that as much as 

 hf percent of all losses for personal injuries were paid for 



73 



