Uninsured Drivers: Costly and Tough To Prevent

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Story Published: Nov 17, 2009 at 7:25 PM PDT

By Peter Bukowski

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YAKIMA -- It could be the most important coverage you ever buy.You could be the safest driver in the world, but if an uninsured driver hits you, you're still stuck.

"Especially if you don't have that component in your insurance. If you don't have uninsured protection or you're doing liability only, a lot of those costs will be personal costs," says Sgt. Gary Jones with the Yakima Police Department.

Yet these cost are also driving many to go without insurance in the first place. Yakima has almost twice as many uninsured drivers as the state average. Nearly one in four Yakima drivers is cruising without coverage. The result: higher costs for everyone else.

"For the driver who is doing what he's supposed to be doing, has proper liability insurance, it causes them to have their rates higher and to have his family protected properly is going to cost more money," Jones says.

When it comes to uninsured drivers, the biggest issue is prevention. Police can only react to accidents. So if you wind up with a dent like this one, police can fine the other driver, but the damage has already been done.

"Our ultimate goal is if we do come across someone who is not insured, we want them to obtain insurance regardless of the fine. That's our goal. We want them to drive safely tomorrow if they're not driving safely today."

But police are limited in the way they can attack this problem, limited by both by technology and dollars.

Sgt. Jones explains, "There's more that we can do. Is it gonna cost money? Like everything, of course it does. It's what the communities going to demand and insist on."

And with little recourse or prevention, uninsured drivers are already costing folks in Yakima every day.

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