By Guy Williams
Comedian Guy Williams gives his take on State Insurance’s latest insights into Kiwi mistakes.
If your name is John, or you even know a John, we have some news for you. That is the name belonging to the most mistake-prone people in New Zealand.
And what are you laughing at, David and Michael? You're not much better! Johns, Davids and Michaels had the most mishaps in 2020, according to brand new research from State Insurance which trawled through over 210,000 car, home and contents insurance claims, among other data, to compile the State Mistake Report.
The aim is to identify "mistake patterns" so you can make fewer of them. Through this detailed research, they've discovered the common daily mistakes Kiwis make.
Like Monday – the day more Kiwis flood their homes, Tuesday is supermarket carpark ding day and Wednesday is the most feared day on the wing mirror calendar.
Thursday – this is the most popular day for frying electronics. Maybe "popular" is the wrong word; the important thing is that you might want to invest in a surge protector, ideally before Thursday!
Friday is the most common day for reversing your car into things and Saturday is the day for smashing potentially expensive glasses (that's prescription and sunglasses). The data doesn't cover it but I'd hazard a guess expensive wine glasses may be involved too.
Sundays, obviously, are a special time for families. Unfortunately they're also the day Kiwis are most likely to forget important things, like handbrakes.
State has really gone full out on this – not only to better understand what's happening out there with all these calamitous Johns, Davids and Michaels but also to help us all make fewer mistakes. They unearthed 4.6 million data points by poring over not only their claims but also publicly available data from Police, NZ Transport, Statistics and weather sources to get the lowdown on avoiding potential risk.
The findings are part of the Annual Mistake Report, developed to help consumers recognise the risks out there. This year, State has introduced a Personalised Mistake Report – an online tool to give people insights to help predict what mistakes they (you, we) might make in the future.
There are some findings you might expect (your garage is the most mistake-prone room in your house) and some that might surprise you – like the most mistake-prone time of the day is 12 noon.
Who knew? But before you try and beat this pattern by not going to the supermarket car park at 12 noon on a Tuesday, listen to the pearls of wisdom from Alex Geale, State's Executive General Manager of Distribution.
One of the key reasons for all these weird and wonderful mishaps is because people are just too busy: "We know everyone is super-busy these days. But there are lots of little things people can do to cut down their chances of making an expensive mistake – and the Mistake Report can help with that.
"Things like de-cluttering the garage – the most mistake-prone room in the house – make sense. So does people taking a bit more time, and maybe planning in advance, so they avoid literally bumping into each other," she says.
Geale found Saturday as lost-specs day remarkable. It could be, she says, that – free from the demands of work and the workplace – people drop their guard, and lose sight of what's important…literally!
There's more: across New Zealand, the most mistakes were made by people with names beginning with "J". The North Island is more mistake-prone than the South (the mainlanders always knew that…), even when corrected for population numbers.
If you have an accident during a meal, the least likely time is breakfast (so take extra care at lunch, particularly at 12 noon, the most mistake-prone time of the day.)
And, if you really want to impress your friends with your knowledge of trivia, try this: You are NOT more likely to make a mistake on the 13th, and there is zero evidence that more things go wrong when there's a full moon!
As for data on full moons that happen on the 13th… we didn't look into that.
Visit State's Personalised Mistake Report tool and learn how you can make fewer mistakes https://mistakereport.state.co.nz