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California orders auto insurers to refund premiums due to coronavirus - Roadshow:
One of the (admittedly minor) upsides to many people being asked to stay in their homes during the COVID-19 outbreak is that, on the whole, people are driving much less. This means that they're using less gasoline, emitting fewer pollutants and not getting into so many accidents. You'd think that last thing would translate into a drop in the cost of car insurance. You'd be wrong.
Except in California, of course. California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara ordered on Monday that auto insurance companies return the premiums paid for coverage for the months of March and April because of the state's shelter-in-place requirements, and that order might extend to May.
"With Californians driving fewer miles and many businesses closed due to the COVID-19 emergency, consumers need relief from premiums that no longer reflect their present-day risk of accident or loss," Lara said in a statement. "Today's mandatory action will put money back in people's pockets when they need it most."
Many auto insurance companies have come under fire for their lack of action during the COVID-19 crisis, with critics accusing the companies of profiting from this pandemic. As a response, most of the major insurers, including Allstate, Geico and Nationwide, have begun to offer refunds of around 15% to customers. Still, the California order goes much further than that.
"I applaud efforts made by insurance companies to date that have offered grace periods and flexibility to consumers and businesses during this national emergency," Lara added. "We must do more to help our hard-working families and small businesses."
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday April 16 2020, @12:35PM (3 children)
You can check the annual mileage of any car in the UK given its registration number (the publically visible plate) here [www.gov.uk] It does not have to be your own car, and you can even see what faults the car has, and has had in its past.
For a given car and driver, the best estimate of risk (in the absence of detailed data about its usage) is that it is linear with mileage.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 16 2020, @12:54PM (2 children)
Last I checked, the UK wasn't California - which has an even worse problem with control freaks. Can you imagine what terrible policies California would implement, if they had access to that sort of data?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nuke on Thursday April 16 2020, @04:44PM (1 child)
In the UK cars must have an annual roadworthiness check, "The MoT Test" : the TLA means the then "Ministry of Transport" which first implemented it around 60 years ago. Naturally, the indicated mileage at the annual test is recorded as part of the MoT paperwork, so the UK "State" has had access to it for a long time.
What is more recent is making this information open to the public. This is nothing to do with state control, in fact the state gains nothing from it - it is only revealing information it already has. The reason for revealing it (apart from the principle of "Open Government", which in practice cuts both ways), is to allow potential buyers of used cars to check whether the car has had serious past problems and that it has not been clocked. Clocking, ie hacking the odometer to lower the indicated mileage, has been a common problem in the past. Shady used car dealers could still clock cars today (but I understand it is now very difficult) but at least they cannot reduce the mileage below that recorded at the previous MoT test.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 16 2020, @11:57PM
As any red-blooded American libertarian knows, anything those pinko Limeys do must be wrong and bad.
The same goes for the Socialists in California.