Legislators, lower auto insurance rates
Published 7:00 pm Thursday, January 30, 2020
When the Louisiana Legislature meets in March, one of its top priorities should be to lower auto insurance rates in the state.
According to The Zebra, an auto insurance comparison website, Louisiana has the second-highest auto insurance rates in the nation and New Orleans has the second-highest for cities in the nation.
Louisiana’s annual rate is $2,379, second in the nation only to Michigan, which has an annual rate of $3,096, the highest. Likewise, New Orleans has a whopping annual $3,735 rate, second only to Detroit at a massive $6,208 rate, according to Zebra. Baton Rouge had the seventh highest rates, $2,855, for U.S. cities.
By comparison, the annual auto insurance rate in Texas, ranked 30th, is $1,415; Arkansas, 14, $1,698; and Mississippi, 19, $1,587. In addition, Texas has largest insurance rate decrease at -20 percent.
The Zebra report analyzed more than 73 million car insurance rates, dozens of risk trends and risk factors and how they affect insurance pricing nationwide.
There is no excuse for Louisiana to have such high auto insurance rates compared to surrounding states, other than the state’s policies and laws.
Here some other findings in the report.
• The cost of car insurance keeps rising, with average rates up nearly 30 percent since 2011.
• Average rates now exceed $,200 in some cities, more than four times the national average.
• The cost of car insurance — and the impact of rising rates — is significantly different from one place to the next.
• Since 2011, rates have increased (as much as 86 percent) in 44 states and Washington D.C., while seven states have seen decreases.
• Since last year, rates have changed as much as 21 percent in some states.
Among the reasons given are new technologies driving up car costs, and technology changing driving behavior and distracting drivers.
It is up legislators and other state officials to come up ways to put Louisiana on a downward trend for auto insurance rates. Texas might be a good place to start by finding out how it decreased rates by -20 percent. The entire report is available at www.thezebra.com/state-of-insurance/auto/2020/#download.
