Newspaper circulation is down because Fox News and bloggers on the far right do not have to worry about facts and can instead pander to the ill informed. No wonder newspaper columnists are increasingly writing articles like this one that are simply repackaged political rhetoric without a logical point. A basic business rule is that, when you have fixed overhead and your volume goes down, you pander to the ill informed in the hopes of remaining relevant.

Jay,

Even though the number of auto injuries and auto deaths have dropped over time, a lot of other factors have gone the other way. The cost of medical care, the price of repairing or replacing a car, and average income (which may need to be replaced if the accident is severe enough) have all gone up since these minimums were established.

Sure, there's a financial incentive for ambulance chasers to advocate for this, but the state has minimum coverage levels for a reason: to ensure that there is at least some mitigation of the devastating effect of an car accident on the victim.

Why shouldn't the minimum level of mitigation be indexed to inflation (or at least be closer to an inflation adjusted level)?

Leaving the minimum at the current level means that you will effectively be lowering it over time. Do you think the minimum should be lower now?

Lawyers also make a killing in civil court over medical doctors' mistakes (but Obama & Co. didn't address this in their new law).

Marylanders need to contact their state Senators and demand they vote against the raise in minimum insurance coverage.

http://mdelect.net/electedofficials/

So basically what you are saying here is that if we raise the minimum auto insurance, there's going to be less accidents? Survey Says!? Wrong! There's still going to be a lot of accidents... There's still going to be a lot of lawsuits.... Raising minimum auto insurance like that IS NOT GOING TO PREVENT ACCIDENTS! Last time I checked Money and the auto insurance documents are not DRIVING THE CAR! The person who is behind the wheel is DRIVING the car!

Just when I think my disdain of these ambulance chasers can't get any higher, they manage to rachet it up. I'd call them the lowest form of life, but I don't want to insult single cell organisms.

Lawyers shouldn't even have a seat at the table.

It will be amusing (in a dark way) to see trial lawyers fulminate and obfuscate in response to this post. People need to realize to what extent the trial bar is just another industry lobbying for special favors (despite their sometimes entertaining TV ads about fighting for the little guy).

This commentary is a joke, and this state's auto insurance minimums are a joke. Insurance is not a bad thing, it is a good thing. The reality is that the vast majority of Marylanders see fit to carry insurance limits vastly higher than the minimum for a reason. That reason is because the minimum will not come close to covering medical costs if they hit someone and they don't want to be wiped out in court.

Whenever you get behind the wheel you have the potential of changing someone else's life forever. I myself was hit by an unemployed construction worker 5 years ago who only had the minimum insurance. I was on a bicycle and he ran a red light and crushed my knee. Now it's 5 years, 4 extremely invasive surgeries, and $300K in medical bills later, with at least one more surgery to go. What's worse, less you think that I am defending the Lawyers, is that a large sum of money that should have gone to paying my medical bills, went to the lawyers instead because the insurance companies refused to do what they were clearly obligated to do... And I still have a seriously messed up knee...

I have no problem making people pay more for the privilege to drive if it means that others are better protected against their negligent actions. What is not fair now is that I now pay large sums to carry higher uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage because the state isn't willing to make people who drive be responsible for their own risk. That is not fair. Driving is not a right. It is a privilege that carries responsibility.

Insurance protect ones self and others from the risks that they pose on the roads. If people are not willing to pay for a minimum level of coverage that is reasonable to protect others, which the current minimums are not, they should not be allowed on the roads. This isn't about Lawyers wanting premiums to rise, this is about having a rational insurance system. By raising the battle cry against the trial lawyers you are simply obscuring the real issue.

Jay, I apologize. I did not mean to offend. The incentives facing a segment of this system are a perfectly legitimate topic of discussion. However, the issue of the Lawyers is being shoved to the forefront of this debate in a manner that is only serving to obscure the real issues and rally and redirect a public's anger against an issue to which the Lawyers are only peripherally connected. While your intentions may be perfectly benign, the result of interjecting commentary like this into the debate is inflammatory and counterproductive. However, my words at the beginning of my post were clearly poorly chosen so I apologize.

No offense taken. I couldn't make up my mind about the bill without more data. How many others like you are there out there who suffered from low/nonexistent coverage? What's the risk that higher premiums will cause thousands more to drive with NO coverage, which would make things worse? Etc. Anyway, thanks for the relevant comments. JH

Jay, I agree that increasing premium costs do have the potential to force some out of insurance, potentially increasing the liability facing others. However, the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration is not blind. When your coverage lapses they are automatically notified resulting in a $100 a month fine for as long as you are currently holding your tags without insurance. I know this because, I have to admit, mine once lapsed for about a week when my automatic bill payments got fouled up. This would very quickly add up to far more than the increased cost of insurance and is almost impossible to get around. Moreover, the state very quickly suspends your registration. It would be far harder than I believe you are giving credit, without driving an unregistered car altogether, for people to simply drop their coverage and still drive. This does, of course, raise the prospect of forcing poor people off of the roads entirely in a city/state with horrendous public transportation, which is not fair either. But the answer to that is better public transportation, not a dysfunctional insurance system.

Poor people won't be forced off the road. They will simply do what a lot of poor people already do drive without insurance or on a suspended license or even revoked license. What the lawyers want the legislature to ignore is the function that UMI coverage plays in protecting the innocent victims of either uninsured or underinsured drivers. Any responsible person who has insurance is going to make sure they have a UMI policy equal to the liability coverage they have.

Greg Hopper,
Is that the DNC School of Business you refer? Get your own facts straight before spouting out your own nonsense. The trial lawyers are in the DNC's back pocket.

I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics page that offers a CPI calculator. I found that $40,000.00 in 1972 is $207,407.66 in today's dollars.

Given that number, a rise to $60,000.00 is an outrage, but an outrage because it's too low.

The CPI calculator can be accessed here:

http://www.bls.gov/cpi/

The icon that will take you to the calculator itself is toward the bottom of the page.

(BTW, although I'm an attorney, I really don't have a pecuniary dog in this fight because I don't represent either plaintiffs or defendants in personal injury matters.)

First: I am a lawyer who handles auto accident cases, both for injured persons and also defends them for insurance companies.

Every time a law is changed there are winners and losers.
The winners here would be people with significant injuries and without uninsured motorist coverage to compensate them.
The winners would include some lawyers, but actually, not that many and not by that much, because most auto accidents result in claims that are worth less than $20,000 or more than $30,000.
The 90% of the insured population who already have coverage at this level or higher would see little effect. Actually, there should be a very small decrease in their premiums.

Question for Mr. Hancock: You state in your column "auto cases are often settled to the limit of the insurance coverage. " What do you mean by "often" and where do you get this information? It seems to me, from 32 years of handling these cases, that this statement is just flat out incorrect.

I don't care that the minimum is not enough to satisfy other people. All I know is that taxes, fees, surcharges, and "pass-along-costs" are increasing for me. And that is taking money out of my pocket and giving it to someone else. I don't want to do that! Your charts, stats, rationale means nothing to me. I tired of everyone "digging" into my pocket.!!