Missouri’s projected rate of uninsured passenger vehicles dropped by 18 percent—or 63,000 autos—during 1999, reaching the lowest levels since the state enacted its current mandatory insurance law in 1987, according to the Missouri Department of Insurance.
The agency’s annual computer comparison of state auto license registrations with insurer reports found that the overall uninsured rate for liability coverage dropped from 9.1 percent of passenger vehicles in 1998 to 7.3 percent last year.
The highest uninsured rates are found in St. Louis City and County, Jackson County and Missouri’s extreme southeastern counties. The previous record lows of 7.4 percent uninsured for liability occurred in 1990 and 1996. The rate peaked at 14.1 percent in 1991.
With the uninsured rate jumping again in 1997, the legislature began enacting a series of measures to increase compliance with Missouri’s mandatory liability insurance laws. Since 1987, those statutes have required auto owners to carry liability insurance covering medical treatment of at least $25,000 per injured person up to $50,000 per accident plus property damage to other vehicles of $10,000.
The Missouri General Assembly passed and the late Gov. Mel Carnahan signed legislation that required car owners to show proof of insurance when they obtained new or renewed license plates after Jan. 1, 1998. Before, owners only had to attest that they had insurance coverage. Followup legislation, effective in August 1999, also outlawed the sale of auto liability insurance policies of less than three months.
Next year, the Missouri Department of Revenue will begin sending notices to a sample of auto owners whose insurance coverage appears to lapse in month-to-month comparisons in a new auto insurance database. In 2003, the revenue department is expected to implement a system that provides notices to all such owners.
Overall, the comparison of license registrations and outstanding liability policies showed that licensed vehicles on the road increased from 3,870,220 to 3,939,658 in 1999 while the number of uninsured vehicles dropped from 350,483 to 287,486. Missouri’s highest 1999 rate of uninsured autos continued to be found in St. Louis at 28 percent, or about the same as in 1998.
The report projects that more than half of passenger vehicles registered are uninsured in some parts of the city. Double-digit uninsured rates also were found in St. Louis County (10.0 percent), Jackson County (11.9 percent), Platte County (13.2 percent) and the traditionally high uninsured southeastern counties of Butler (10.0), Dunklin (10.2), Mississippi (14.1), New Madrid (14.0) and Pemiscot (14.1). But all of those counties as well as other uninsured “hot spots,” especially in southeast Missouri, showed lower uninsured rates from 1998 to 1999.
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