car insurance laws Tag

There has been a successive sequence of reports over the years which confirm that the car insurance industry actively discriminates against different groups of people. Now before going any further, this requires a little explanation. Because insurance is all about assessing and managing risk, it’s inevitable that insurers will charge higher rates to those who represent a higher level of risk. To that extent, it would not be unfair to discriminate against drivers who are more likely to be involved in accidents. Indeed, if we briefly travel across to Europe,Read More

The British may do everyday things in an odd way — like drive on the wrong side of the road — but when it comes to investigating the different ways in which the consumer can be ripped off, it can sometimes teach America how to make life better. Before coming to car insurance, let’s briefly consider the business practices of Amazon. Now you may think this online retailer is doing a great job by regularly offering discounts on the products it sells. But here’s the problem. When people sign upRead More

This is a genuinely perplexing issue. Given today’s technology, there should be no uninsured drivers on the road. There are state databases showing all the vehicles registered for use on the public roads, and the insurers have their own records showing which vehicles are insured and by whom. It should be the easiest coding task to combine the two databases and produce a list of all the registered vehicles where there’s no valid auto insurance policy in force. Law enforcement officers can therefore work through the list, visiting all theRead More

Car insurance is a very simple process on paper. If you own a vehicle and want to protect yourself against losses, you enter into a contract with an insurer. In the circumstances set out in the policy, the insurer will pay out if you suffer losses of the right type. Ah, so what losses are actually covered? Well that’s for the insurer to offer, and for you to accept or reject. In practical terms, no insurer is going to rewrite the terms of a policy just for you. So itRead More

Ever since we humans came down from the tress and began to create our high civilization in caves, we’ve been making lists of our favorite things. It all began with the top ten good things to eat and moved on from there. Today, we’ve kept the habit of making lists, but now focus on quite different things, some pleasant, others less so. This being the middle of 2014, enough time has passed to allow the bean counters to add up all the things we were doing in 2013. Some wereRead More

The tactics of which cases to fight and which to settle have been very well worked out by the car insurance industry. It’s a case of balancing different financial elements. While money is held on investment, it is earning an income. Not all claimants can afford to pay an attorney to sue. If they decide they want to start the case on their own, the court fees required to file the pleadings will come as a shock, and many make a mess of drafting the pleadings and lose the cases.Read More

The boundary line between the law and politics is often difficult to define. When politicians make laws, they are turning policy into enforceable rights. When courts enforce those rights, they are giving rights to ordinary citizens. It’s a top-down approach to empowering ordinary people. But sometimes, the outcome in the courts is unpredictable. So, for example, a case in Eugene, Oregon, was started by two teens against Governor John Kitzhaber. Concerned they might not have a future to look forward to if climate change proves to be real, they hadRead More

In all but the twelve states where some version of the no-fault car insurance system is in place, the law of tort is applied to decide which of the drivers involved was the most immediate cause of the accident. The standard test of negligence assumes every driver owes a duty of care to all other road users. So if it’s foreseeable someone else may be at risk, it’s up to you to change what you’re doing to avoid putting the other in danger. Why should this matter? Many people don’tRead More

There comes a point when reports of aggressive rate increases by car insurance companies stop being anecdotal and become properly researched facts. For the last year or so, many have been reporting annual premium increases as a response to driving violations. This was the situation based on 2012 figures: Now a properly conducted survey confirms rates can jump by more than 90% depending on the nature of the ticket issued or the conviction sustained. You might think just going 1 to 15 mph above the speed limit is a trivialRead More

Everyone who has car insurance knows the reality of zip code discrimination. We all talk with family and friends and understand how unfair life can be when the rates for similar makes and models vary so much, just by changing the address by a few blocks. Sometimes you wonder whether it’s a good thing to find out exactly how much the rates change. There’s greater peace of mind not knowing how much more you’re paying. But, for better or worse, here comes some research from California. We need to startRead More