Accident & Injury Law in Texas

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

To reduce the number of drivers without auto insurance, the state of Texas has launched a database that allows law enforcement officials to tell which drivers have insurance and which don’t.

The program, known as TexasSure, began in the Austin area on June 2, and is being tested for about 60 days before it is expected to go statewide.

Texas drivers are required by law to have auto insurance, but one in five is uninsured, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.

Drivers will still be required to carry proof of insurance, but the database was created to counter those who purchase an, insurance policy, get an insurance card and then cancel their policy.

The $7 million program is a joint effort among DPS, the Transportation Department, the Texas Department of Insurance and the insurance industry. It is being financed by vehicle registration fees. TexasSure requires all Texas insurance providers to supply a list of customers with up-to-date policies. The state then matches those policies to a driver’s license number, license plate number and vehicle identification number.

Under current law, drivers pulled over fora traffic violation who are found to be uninsured are ticketed $350 for the first offense, plus fees. Repeat offenders face fines of up to $1,000 and a two-year license suspension.

Bookmark to:

Yikes!  I’m not the only one.  Texas families saw their health insurance premiums soar 40 percent in five years - 10 times faster then their incomes increased, according to a report released today by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, N.J., a national foundation that promotes health care improvement.

The foundations report, “Squeezed: How Costs for Insuring Families are Outpacing Income” was prepared by University of Minnesota researchers, did not study why premiums increase almost 30 percent nationally to an average of $10,728 in 2005.  In Texas, premiums jumped to an average $11,533.

Nationally, Texas ranked third behind Oklahoma and Idaho in premium increases from 2001 to 2005.  At the same time, Texas ranked No. 1 in the percentage of residents without insurance.  In 2005-2006 that figure was 27 percent and the state had 5.5 million of the nation’s 47 million uninsured people.

People without coverage often get expensive emergency room care, and those costs get passed on as higher premiums to people with insurance, says Regina Rogoff, the executive director of People’s Community Clinic which treats uninsured people in the Austin area.

Taxpayers also share the tab when hospitals and governments do more to help the uninsured according to Clarke Heidrick, a member of the Travis County Healthcare District Board.

Bookmark to:

I have some clients who recently fell into a hole in their GAP Policy. Here’s what happened:

They bought a new car in October, 2007 and purchased a GAP policy with it. The policy is, of course, designed to cover any gap between what they owe on the car and the replacement value of the car in case the car is in an accident. Since cars depreciate faster than you pay them off, GAP policies are useful when you are purchasing a new car with little or no money down (otherwise they can be a waste of money).

My clients car was destroyed in January of 2008 and there was a $4,000 gap. The policy holder (Stonebridge Casualty Insurance Company) refuses to pay for the gap coverage. The reason? My clients refinanced the car with their own bank in January.

The lesson: Shop for the best rates before you buy the car, and if you have already bought the car, check your GAP policy before you refinance.

Bookmark to:

Electronic Stability Control (ESC) selectively applies brakes to individual wheels to help keep the vehicle under control when swerving to avoid an accident or cornering on slippery pavement, and it can help a vehicle stay out of a situation that could lead to a rollover.

By model year 2012, the government will require automakers to include ESC on passenger vehicles. If all cars had ESC, some 10,000 lives a year could be saved, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Current equipped models are involved in 36 percent fewer fatal passenger-car crashes and 63 percent fewer fatal SUV, van, and pickup-truck crashes than vehicles without ESC, federal officials say. Unfortunately, stability control is available mainly on higher-priced vehicles; many small, inexpensive cars don’t offer it.

ESC is so important that Consumer Reports calls it the “single greatest advance in auto safety since the safety belt.” In fact, Consumer Reports, which has been rating cars since 1948, believes ESC is so critical to the safety of all drivers and passengers that they’ve revised their rating system to give it greater weight.

Bookmark to:

Anchorage, Alaska personal injury lawyer Michael Schneider has a great story about a client who lost a personal injury case because the client spoke to the insurance adjuster, trusted the adjuster, and apparently followed the adjuster’s bad advice, which ended up hurting the claim.

Mr. Schneider doesn’t have specifics but only says that at trial the client couldn’t explain to the jury why the client did and didn’t do certain things because to do so would violate a rule of evidence that prohibits the parties from mentioning that the defendant has insurance. (Just speculation, but he suspects the plaintiff wanted to tell the jury that the reason he didn’t immediately seek treatment is because the insurance adjuster told him he didn’t need to go see a doctor because the pain goes away after a few days, etc)

Sadly, this all could have been prevented if the personal injury plaintiff had spent a little time and done a little research about the process of making a personal injury claim.

In this day and age of the internet, plaintiffs have access to all types of resources that can help them protect their claim or even pursue their claim on their own. For example, we offer a free report “The Five Deadly Sins that can Wreck Your Car Accident Claim” which you can order without any obligation.

But I’m not alone. There are literally hundreds of websites offering free advice about all aspects of personal injury claims. If an injured person just takes a few minutes, they can learn a lot of information that will minimize the amount of damage that they do to their own claim.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Bookmark to: