An article in the Washington Times recently tried to explain why so many people get away driving uninsured.
The article focused on Dan McMullen, an insurance agent in Ferguson, Mo., who the Washington Times reported that in the first six months of this year, more than 500 new customers walked into his office to buy auto insurance. By August, 46 percent had lost coverage for failing to make payments, he says. That’s an improvement. His short-term dropout rate used to be over 50 percent.
It seems there are lots of people driving around the region without insurance. In Missouri and Illinois, you need insurance to register a car. The law says drivers have to maintain coverage. But a driver can drop coverage after renewing license plates and drive around for the next two years. They will go penalty-free – unless they are pulled over by a cop or have an accident.
Even then, the fine for lacking insurance in Missouri is less than the cost of insuring a car.
But it seems that uninsured motorists are more accident-prone than other drivers. Two years ago, the Insurance Research Council looked at claims from serious accidents, mainly those where people were hurt. In Missouri and Illinois, 13 percent of drivers in bad crashes were uninsured, a point higher than the national average. In other words, there’s a 1 in 8 chance that a driver in a crash will have no coverage.
That’s a lot of crashes. Missouri tallied 6,345 reports of accidents involving uninsured motorists in 2015, according to the revenue department.
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