March Auto Insurance News Wrap-Up

Online Auto Insurance News summarizes some of the past month’s most important developments in the car coverage industry and marketplace

Los Angeles (Vocus/PRWEB) March 31, 2011

Premium rates continued to climb upward, lawmakers in Mississippi and Alabama took steps to crack down on their uninsured motorist problems, legislators in Florida and New York began campaigns to attack no-fault fraud and a report showed smaller car insurance sites are getting a growing volume of online traffic.

The following summary sheet wraps up a few of March’s most significant auto insurance news stories covered at News.OnlineAutoInsurance.com :

* The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated in its latest report on consumer costs (http://bls.gov/cpi/cpid0211.pdf) that the price of insuring a vehicle rose one-third of 1 percent between January and February. Policy prices in February 2011 were 4.2 percent higher than in February 2010.

# Mississippi and Alabama — which have been estimated to have the second- and third-highest uninsured rates in the nation, respectively — may soon be getting insurance verification systems after legislators approved their establishment. By implementing the electronic systems, these states may be better able to identify drivers who flout compulsory coverage laws.
# Amid reports that no-fault fraud has continued to escalate in Florida and New York, lawmakers there have introduced bills that would make it easier for companies to contest questionable claims. Two of the bills in Florida have received favorable committee votes, while New York senators approved a bill to make staging auto accidents a felony offense.

# A comScore report showed that the volume of unique visitors to a sample of quote-aggregators’ and small insurers’ websites grew by 60 percent and 70 percent, respectively, between the fourth quarters of 2009 and 2010.

# Wisconsin legislators gave the final OK to a bill that would reduce minimum liability limits and eliminate stacking provisions.

# An insurer-backed federal bill that would establish national standards for teen-licensing laws was re-introduced to Congress. The STANDUP Act aims to cut the teen accident rate by requiring more extensive experience for teens before they receive full driving privileges.

To read articles about these and the latest car insurance news developments, readers can go to http://news.onlineautoinsurance.com/ where visitors will find the only site on the Web devoted to publishing nothing but the latest newsworthy stories about the U.S. car coverage industry.

Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/press-releases/11/03/p966271/march-auto-insurance-news-wrap-up#ixzz1IZaXC7fi