Uninsured Drivers and Your Premium?

Unisured drivers: increase to your insurance premium? The short answer is yes, uninsured drivers do increase everyone’s insurance premium. Is there a way to change this or make it more balanced and fair? That would be the question before many insurance regulators and state officials who seem to be cracking down on those who drive without the minimum insurance required by law.

Don’t Mess With Texas is one way to sum up the attitude of state officials with regards to the uninsured driver. Vehicles can be towed away with ‘two strikes and you’re out’ regulations that are set to be enforced. After a driver is warned once, a second stop finding them uninsured will get the cars impounded in larger cities such as Dallas and San Antonio. Smaller cities in Texas may not have the facilities to impound all the vehicles of drivers who have no insurance and so do not enforce the law very often. This has state legislators wanting to pass a ‘one strike and you’re out’ law that will require broader application of insurance regulations for drivers.

Florida has a 23% rate of uninsured drivers according to an independent research group. This is expected to get worse with the economic downturn and the high rate is related to a high number of unemployed people in the state and indeed across the nation. When people are facing a difficult financial situation they will try to get away with driving without car insurance. It is easier than going without food or electricity but it is a risk and getting riskier all the time as state regulators try to find ways to beef up enforcement.

Many wonder why anyone should be forced by the government to buy something from a private company. The reason usually given is that driving requires a certain responsibility and is a privilege, not a right.