Gov. Hochul Thursday sought to assemble assist for a slate of proposals to scale back the price of car insurance coverage within the Empire State.
“We’re here to continue our journey to drive down costs for New Yorkers,” Hochul informed reporters on Wards Island Thursday. “When new Yorkers are paying their bills, there’s yet another bill that keeps going up and up and up — and that is the cost of their car insurance.”
New York State residents pay a mean of $4,000 a yr for automotive insurance coverage, Hochul mentioned, roughly $1,500 greater than the nationwide common. In Brooklyn and the Bronx, in line with the governor’s workplace, that common can climb to $6,000 yearly.
A set of proposals first specified by Hochul’s State of the State tackle final week would search to scale back that value, by cracking down on insurance coverage fraud, limiting the definition of “serious injury,” and limiting payouts to drivers working a car illegally or deemed “mostly at fault” for a collision.
“For those driving without a license, those driving drunk or committing a felony at the time of the crash, they should not get a payout for their behavior,” Hochul mentioned.
The proposals would additionally enhance funding for investigations of insurance coverage fraud by the New York State Police and the state’s Division of Monetary Companies.
Hochul’s workplace reported 1,729 situations of staged crashes — intentional collisions searching for insurance coverage payouts — in 2023, essentially the most not too long ago obtainable information.
That very same yr, insurance coverage firms reported 38,270 incidents of suspected fraud, in line with the state — up from 24,238 in 2020.
Hochul additionally mentioned she is going to push to rewrite the authorized threshold for “serious injuries” beneath state regulation, an effort at tort reform to restrict costly litigation.
