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Uninsured Drivers in Ohio
There’s a wide range of estimates regarding the number of
uninsured (UM) drivers in Ohio. Because Ohio has a financial responsibility
(FR) law, not a pure compulsory insurance law, it’s difficult
to truly gauge the number of Ohioans not complying with the FR
law and are therefore considered uninsured. A definitive percentage
or range for those who may be driving without insurance or other
means of financial responsibility would be purely speculative unless
a proportionate number of drivers from various parts of the state
were randomly stopped and asked for FR proof.
What is tracked is
the FR status of drivers involved in crashes and how many have
been found at-fault in crashes. This information
is provided in the chart below for 1996–2004. Of notes is
the fact that percentage of drivers who were found to be uninsured
and at-fault in Ohio crashes has remained below 4% compared to
all at-fault drivers in crashes since 2000 (column #8 in the table
below). However nearly 72% of the uninsured drivers
in Ohio over the past nine years involved in crashes were also
found in error, (column #7 in the table below).
According
to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), the threat of license
suspension and the addition of more FR law enforcement
mechanisms likely motivated motorists to come into compliance with
Ohio law in the years immediately following the strengthening of
the law. Since October 1995, law enforcement has been checking
Ohio drivers for FR proof at the scene of a crash, when issuing
a traffic citation or during a vehicle safety inspection.
BMV random
verification program
An additional enforcement measure was introduced
by the BMV in December 1998. The BMV began randomly selecting Ohio
vehicle owners
who receive a form requesting that they mail in proof of compliance
with Ohio’s financial responsibility law based on a specified
date. Click
here for the specifics regarding the BMV’s random
verification program.
1 Based on ODPS at-fault percentage total of 49.9%
2 Figures for 1999 are provisional
Source: Ohio Department of Public Safety, Ohio Traffic Crash
Facts, 1996–2004 editions
Uninsured motorist studies
The Insurance Research Council (IRC)
released a December 2000 study that found 13.7% of US drivers are
uninsured. According to the
study, the problem of driving uninsured varies greatly among
states, from a high of 32.4% in Colorado to a low of 4.1% in
Maine. The IRC study estimates Ohio’s uninsured motorist
(UM) rate at 12.6%. In a similar 1999 IRC report, Ohio’s
UM rate was 14.7%, while East Cleveland’s ratio was 38.1%.
The chart below provides estimates of uninsured drivers by state.
IRC
calculations were based on the ratio of claims by individuals
injured by uninsured drivers (UM coverage) to claims by individuals
injured by insured drivers (bodily injury liability coverage) for
1995–1997. 16 states and the District of Columbia had ratios
of UM to bodily injury (BI) claim frequencies above the US average
of 13.7%, and 34 states had ratios below the US average.
The IRC
study found that Ohio’s 1995–1997 UM claim
frequency was .179 per 100 vehicles (US average was .193) and its
BI claim frequency was 1.42 per 100 vehicles (US average was 1.40).
According to a July 2005 Ohio Insurance Institute analysis of
compulsory insurance states in which proof of insurance is required
at registration:
- 24 states and Washington DC require auto insurance
proof at registration. Ohio does not.
- Of those states requiring
proof, only three have lower average premium expenditures than
Ohio. They are Alabama, Kansas and Nebraska.
- 14 of the states
(including Washington DC) have higher UM insurance percentage
rates (based on the 2000 IRC study) and 11 have lower UM rates than Ohio.
Ohio
Supreme Court cases affecting UM coverage
The November 2003 Ohio
Supreme Court decision in Westfield v. Galatis, overturned its
1999 Scott-Pontzer v. Liberty Mutual
Fire Co. decision,
allowing commercial
auto UM coverage to apply as it was intended. The Court’s ruling
limits UM/UIM claims only to those cases where the employee is acting within
the scope
of his or her employment. The decision basically cancelled existing Scott-Pontzer claims where the plaintiff was not acting within the course and scope of
employment at the time of the crash.
The Scott-Pontzer ruling allowed individuals to file
claims through a business’ commercial auto policy for UM/UIM
coverage when the individual was not driving an employer’s
vehicle, not acting within the scope of their employment or, in
some cases,
not even an employee of the business.
The Court revisited its prior
ruling in Scott-Pontzer and limited its application to only those
situations where an employee was
within the course and scope of employment. The 4–3 majority
reasoned that the Court could limit the prior decision because
Scott-Pontzer was wrongly decided, the decision defied practical
workability, and that abandoning the prior precedent would not
create undue hardship upon those who relied upon it. The Galatis decision surprised Ohio’s judicial community and court-watchers
because the court took a strong position in correcting a string
of recent UM decisions. The Court abandoned the principal of stare
decisis, in which courts generally let decisions of previous courts
stand. While a generally accepted legal practice, stare decisis
has never prevented courts from revisiting decisions that were
hastily or erroneously decided–which was what the Galatis
court did in this instance.
Source: Insurance Research Council, state averages
for 1995–1997
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According to a study released in April 2004
by the World Health Organization and the World Bank, about 1.2
million people around the world lose their lives in vehicle
crashes each year. |
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