Florida’s Cheap Car Insurance Law; The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Occasionally some drivers need to get insured really fast and that is what temporary vehicle insurance can be used for. However, in the State of Florida getting cheaper auto insurance is not the case. The sunny State is a great place for some; for the reason there are no state taxes, but insuring your vehicle is a different story.

There can be many reasons you, as a driver, need to get insured fast. Perhaps you have to register and begin to use an automobile which has been sitting in the garage for a couple of years, or perhaps you missed a payment and incidentally let your bill lapse. In Florida getting insurance is not as simple as it seems or at least you have to pay money upfront. Paying upfront is not good for most families since some may not have the cash available to pay for insurance.

Drivers in the sunny state want a “no down-payment” option. Under Florida law getting cheap car insurance really fast is not available since the law dictates to insurers they have to gather down payments from drivers they get from a “new” company.

You are able to check here to see about the law which has been in affect some time. The law states that a policy holder, in the State of Florida, must have at least two months worth of premiums for a new policy to be legal to drive. The amount, whether one hundred dollars or four hundred dollars has to come out of the pocket of the person wanting to insure their vehicle.

What is more frustrating to many drivers in Florida is the amount to pay is two months worth of premiums is restricted from insurers, agents, and even short-term financing companies to give the initial payment to a driver for the new policy. Simply put; if you want to borrow the money, a driver cannot, according to the law which has been in place since the mid 1990’s.

Exemptions to the down payment

There are some exceptions to the law where a driver does not have to pay the down-payment. Some believe it is justified others do not.

1. When a family member is renewing a policy with the same insurer then a member of the family can bypass the the initial down-payment.

2. When a family member of the same insurer has a policy from the insurer and the member of the family is renewing the policy.

3. If payments are made through automatic payroll deduction from an employer or an automatic funds transfer from a bank account.

4. If the person is on active duty, former duty, or retired from the military. This also applies to the dependents of military personnel.

So, what is up with the down payment for the State of Florida? According to state council and other advocates of the law the primary advantage is to impose the nations mandatory auto insurance law. However, as stated in the last article, not all states “require” drivers to have insurance. This is probably more fluff from politicians than anything else.

On the other hand, there is a good explanation to have a down payment. If a driver can get insurance with no down payment then over the next month or two the driver would drop the policy and drive uninsured. This is Florida’s way of handling uninsured motorists.

Since Florida’s uninsured motorist rate is over twenty percent it seems like they need to implement a law to make sure drivers on the road are insured. The down side is the uninsured motorist rate has not declined. The residents of California could not afford insurance and the State came up with a cheap car insurance program to reduce the amount of uninsured motorist from over twenty-eight percent to less then twenty.

The other reason Florida has implemented the law is so big insurance companies would not have a biased toward offering “zero down” policies? There is a question mark behind that since I am not sure what that is suppose to mean. The other reason, according to experts of Florida law is it helps to protect insurance companies from a loss since the driver on a “no down-payment” may get into an accident and the insurer never collected on the premium. To me, that seems like a really poor excuse for a law since thirty plus other states have been using “no down-payment” options and the insurers are able to make a lot of money.

There is always two sides to every story and Florida’s law would make the driver more fiscally responsible about their policy, whereas in the State of California, it appears drivers simply could not afford to pay for insurance.