subject: Uninsured Motorist Cover [print this page] No matter where you live, there's an increasing chance the next driver who crashes into you will be uninsured. The national average is about 20% of drivers uninsured. In California, the celebrate because it's only 15%, i.e. a one in seven chance you will be in an accident with no insurance company to begin covering your losses. This means you either buy your own cover or you must be prepared to pay all your own losses out of your own pocket. This is not to say you can never recover losses from an insured driver. The courts exist. There are laws to enforce payment of damages. But since the usual reason for being uninsured is a lack of money, there's no point in spending your money on court fees and a fancy attorney if the driver at fault has no cash and does not earn a good pay check to garnish. That's just adding insult to the existing injury. So the Californians have been carrying out a little research to see exactly how much we have to pay to buy uninsured motorist cover.
The team put together a profile of a single male driver, aged 30. He had no tickets and lived in a modest ZIP code area. They picked a 2010 Toyota Corolla as his vehicle and showed him willing to accept a $500 deductible. All UM policies come with banded cover for personal injuries with the first number being the maximum payable to the first person injured and the second being the total maximum for all medical expenses no matter how many injured. The profile was sent out to all insurers licensed to sell policies in California. The range of the quotes was quite wide with the lowest being $28 for adding 15/30 to the existing cover while the most expensive was $106. If the model driver opted for 25/50, the lowest quote was $60 and the most expensive $148.
California is an interesting state to study because it has a law requiring insurers to quote for UM cover. The lawmakers believe you should always know the cost of rejecting the additional cover. In most other states, you have to ask for a quote. The Californian driver has to opt out of buying the cover. So, given the odds of being hit by an uninsured motorist, is it worth paying a maximum of $148 or $12 per month? Given the cost of hospital treatment it may look a good premium rate to avoid taking the hit on your savings or maxing out your credit card(s). But all this does raise the question why states like California continue refusing to fund effective enforcement of the mandate.
There's no doubt we would all find our auto insurance quotes falling if all 47 states with a mandate enforced the law. Yet every time the question of funding the centralization of record-keeping comes up, the agencies ask for millions to make their computer systems compatible. When police cannot routinely check whether a driver has valid insurance, you know the system is broken. So until politicians get a little backbone and force uninsured motorists off the road, our auto insurance quotes will continue arriving on the high side.
by: Haz Duell
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