You’re sitting at a red light in any city in Texas. Surrounding you are 4 to 5 other drivers waiting with you for the light to change. You may not know it but one or more of those drivers are driving without car insurance.
One of the reason’s Texas has some of the highest car insurance rates in the country, we’re 14th, is the number of uninsured motorists. The good news is that there’s been a dramatic drop in uninsured motorists over the past year. Last year, the number of uninsured motorists was estimated to be 38% of all Texas drivers. This year, it’s dropped to 13% or 2.6 million drivers.
The two reasons credited with the drop are,
- A 4 year old program called TexasSure that’s designed to track if Texas drivers have car insurance
- There’s also been some significant cleanup of the database tracking Texas drivers
Statewide, the number of uninsured drivers in our largest urban counties breaks out like this,
- Bexar County – 13.65%
- Dallas County – 14.79%
- El Paso County – 14.46%
- Harris County – 14.46%
- Tarrant County – 12.61%
- Travis County – 12.54%
Locally, this looks like this,
- Collin County – 8.52%
- Denton County – 9.06%
- Ellis County – 10.49%
- Johnson County – 10.73%
- Kaufman County – 10.80%
- Rockwall County – 9.50%
- Statewide – 13.07%
This is excellent news for all Texas drivers. One of the reasons Texas rates have been so high was the impact of uninsured drivers. My hope is that this will translate into lower auto rates in the future.
If you happen to be hit by someone that has no insurance, or you suspect has no insurance, call 911. The police will issue a ticket and even this small action helps drive home the point that everyone needs insurance!
