The problem is that you’re going to find those schedules very difficult to duplicate via a combination of gas tax and accident fines.
Insurance rates are set through a combination of factors–the age, experience, and driving record of the various drivers covered under the policy, the territory where the vehicle is garaged (rural safer than suburban safer than urban), and the number of miles the vehicle is driven.
For drivers with clean records, you’re replacing that with a single proxy–amount of gasoline purchased.
For drivers involved in an accident, you’re replacing an insurance rate hike–the amount of which, again, depends on a variety of factors–with some sort of multi-year accident fine imposed by the state. You’ve converted civil liability into criminal liability, which when challenged by the motorist will have to be proved by the state beyond a reasonable doubt (as opposed to being litigated by insurance companies with a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard).
I understand the attraction of this change, since the state can put more muscle behind collection. But just because they can, doesn’t mean they will–many cities and states have poor records with respect to collecting on traffic and parking fines.
And I’m still unclear as to how private insurance companies can have any meaningful role in this system. They can process the claims for a fee, but it will be the state’s money that they’re paying out, not their own.
I think you’re going after the problem with too big of a stick. My UM/UIM premium is only 10% of my liability insurance and about 3% of my total auto insurance. There are less intrusive ways of dealing with uninsured motorists, some of which have been suggested by other posters.
That would cost billions in each state, as 14% of drivers are uninsured nationally, with some states as high as 32%. That would entail a prodigious expense in state police man hours, not to mention a crapload of boots.
If the drivers knew the state was going to mean business on enforcing insurance requirements, that rate would drop like a rock. Some of the semi-reputable insurance companies that offer car insurance binders for little down, knowing full well that their clientele has no intention of coming through and paying the rest of the policy, might find it hard to stay in business.
The computer application wouldn’t be that hard to write, and if the state police were too busy to deal with it they could defer to the county sheriff or city police. Part of the cost would be borne by the insurance companies. You want to do business in our state? Fine, pony up to defray the cost of the coverage tracker and be darn sure you let us know when someone’s policy lapses. If they fail to inform the state when the policy lapses, then they have to pay for any medical expenses. If we can keep track of who pays the car registration fees, we can keep track of who buys car insurance.
No doubt. The rub comes in devising a means of convincing uninsured motorists they are actually at risk of being punished. Your plan is so unwieldy that scofflaws can simply play the percentages, because the vast number of uninsured compared to the resources available to implement it means it would be a long time before they got around to a significant fraction of the total.
Heh. Every time a state puffs out its chest like that, the insurance companies call their bluff, and announce they really will pull out. The states cave every time.
Gawd. This sounds suspiciously like the gun registration schemes continuously proposed by the various anti-gun groups. Ask Canada how that’s going. Something the gun registration proposals never address is a means of resolving the inevitable errors in the database. While a guy tries to get his guns back after confiscation by the state, it ain’t necessarily critical; he can still get to work, the grocery store, and drop his mother off for her doctor’s appt. However, when the cops come by and boot your car through error, you’re gonna find yourself seriously inconvenienced when you try to head down to the courthouse to get it resolved. What’s more, since many cars are parked in locked garages on private property, you gotta get a judge involved in every one of these things to get search warrant issued. Adding yet another layer of cost and complexity. So, when you say the problem of uninsured motorists could be easily solved “with a computer application,” you’ve really only begin to address a solution. There are many, many more constituent parts a workable solution than just a “computer application.” That portion of it really doesn’t do anything more than really kick out work requests to the cops.
Most states “mean business” now. Many of them are suspending licenses for multiple years for drivers found without insurance. Lots of states are treating uninsured drivers little differently from DUI convictions. Ohio even has a program where every year it randomly selects 10% of the people holdling current auto registrations and requires them to submit proof of insurance. If you get one of these letters and fail to comply, the state automatically invalidates your registration. And woe to the guy who gets pulled over by the cops and is found to have an invalid registration. He’s probably headed straight to the county lock-up and his car is very likely gonna be impounded. Note, too, that this exact scenario could happen through those database errors.