Lawmakers could repeal Florida’s no-fault insurance law

Reporter: Zach Oliveri
Published: Updated:
The Florida legislature could repeal the no-fault insurance law. (CREDIT: WINK News)

The cost of car insurance could go down if Florida repeals its no-fault insurance law.

But you could be forced to buy another piece of coverage.

Lawmakers in favor say the goal is to lower car insurance rates by making the person responsible for a crash pay.

But the state senate passed its bill without any independent analysis showing premiums would actually go down.

In fact, chances are they could go up.

A change in auto insurance would drive premium increases for just about every driver in the state.

But for Floridians who already carry bodily injury coverage rates could go down.

What would absolutely change is the liability in an accident would be placed with the driver at fault in the crash.

Edwin Gonzalez, an Integrity Insurance agent, likes bodily injury coverage.

“How many times do we have drivers on the road who are either not insured unfortunately or do not have enough coverage injure someone else and now that person is on the hook for their own injuries because the other person wasn’t insured properly,” Gonzalez said.

According to the Insurance Information Institute, 20% of Florida drivers are uninsured.

If this bill passes the House, Mark Friedlander, the director of Corporate Communications, said he expects that number to increase for low-income drivers.

‘They have to put food on the table or pay for car insurance. What’s the choice? Many of them will say I can’t afford this,” Friedlander said. “If the personal injury protection coverage is removed from the policy that can create a drop in the cost. But where this is going to impact people with the cost going up is for someone who doesn’t have bodily injury at all under auto insurance who just have the bare minimum that’s currently required”

The Senate still has to pass the measure. Michigan just did away with no-fault insurance and it’s too early to say what the impact will be there. Colorado got rid of no-fault years ago.

Florida Politics took a look and saw that rates went down at first, but now they’re rapidly rising.

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