Uninsured state must change

Friday, December 7, 2007 9:20 PM CST

Joining the crowd isn’t a smart move by itself, but often the crowd is right. We believe that’s true with one issue before the state Legislature.

A total of 48 states require drivers to obtain auto insurance, and Wisconsin is one of the two holdouts that don’t. State Sen. John Lehman has introduced a bill to rectify that.

A 2004 study by the Insurance Research Council estimated Wisconsin is right around the national norm, with 14 percent of drivers going without insurance. It’s not simply a personal choice. When those drivers get into accidents, the effects reverberate through the entire driving public.

Even when the uninsured driver is at fault, the headaches of trying to collect can send the innocent motorist’s rates skyrocketing. While we can sympathize with those lower-income drivers whose financial pressures could be compounded by the insurance bill, the dangers of not passing it are tough to set aside. Calculating for various states, insurance firms typically peg the impact of protecting against the uninsured in the hundreds of millions.

Lehman’s bill includes provisions that drivers carry a minimum of $25,000 coverage for one person’s injuries and $10,000 coverage against property damage. Considering many policies offer much higher (and pricier) levels of coverage, the expectations are relatively light.

The senator tempered his enthusiasm by pointing out such bills have been rejected a dozen times already. Insurance experts oppose them, suggesting the practical effect of mandatory insurance laws actually is to raise costs.

Industry representatives admit it sounds counterintuitive. Drivers initially buy policies and then drop them, leaving their insurance cards as worthless as the fuzzy dice in the window.

That might be the tendency for a portion of the currently uninsured population. We would bet more would actually follow the law, heeding their parents’ advice to protect their investment.

What percentage of the fines would ever be collected is debatable. The state could follow Texas’s lead, where judges allow poorer motorists to put in community service hours instead.

Refusing to end its holdout is a liability Wisconsin simply can’t afford.

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