Uninsured And Underinsured Drivers

By Author: Norris Rios
Total Articles: 572
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apply these wonderful theories, they tend to break down. Think fad diet books and you should get the message. Anyway, one of the more worrying trends on our roads is the number of people either driving with no insurance or only driving with the bare minimum. For those of you who like statistics, there's a slight disagreement but the national rate seems to be between 18 and 20 percent of drivers on the road uninsured. The majority of those with insurance who own their own vehicles are on the mandatory minimums. Since these are way below the amounts actually necessary to pay the medical expenses of those injured or to repair damaged vehicles, these drivers are partly uninsured. How come there are so many?

Let's come at this from two different directions, starting with enforcement. Drivers should all have a license to be behind the wheel. So all insurance companies could require people asking for insurance to produce a valid driving license before issuing a policy. Every time an insurance company issues a policy, it could notify the state licensing body. That way, the state would have an immediate list of all registered ...
... drivers who did not have a current insurance policy. It could write to every driver asking for proof of coverage, allowing seven days of grace for the drivers to get a policy. Any driver who then failed to produce a policy could be prosecuted.

As an aside, we should mention Oregon which has just produced a report showing only a slight increase in the number of people driving uninsured. Apparently, 6.5% of the drivers involved in accidents in 2010 were uninsured. This report follows up on a change in the law making it more difficult for people to get a driver's license. It seems there has been a significant increase in the number of people driving without licenses, but many unlicensed drivers buy insurance. See what we mean about confusing realities. You can understand drivers not insuring because the economy is bad and jobs are hard to find. But skipping on licensing just because they have to fill in more forms. Well, you decide.

Why then do states not enforce the law on insurance? It would be good to think this was to give people a break during hard times. If the economy is bad and they really cannot afford to insure, you do not chase them. Except, this is the same policy as applied during the boom years. Politicians and elected police officials do not see votes in policies designed to hit the motorists. The result is higher premiums for those who do pay. With the same cost of risk divided among a smaller group of people, there is no alternative. Except there is no rationality in modern politics. Just as you cannot raise taxes, you also have to look the other way when car insurance quotes keep on rising. That does not take the heat off you , of course. You should still get as many car insurance quotes as possible to find the cheapest deals.

Norris Rios is always ready to share his professional point of view on a topic. To see what Norris Rios has written about other things visit http://www.insurmates.com/articles/uninsured-driver.html.