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November 19, 2014

NY Auto Insurance and Road Safety: 3 Updates You Should Know

Street safety in New York City has been a long-time problem for both pedestrians and drivers. This is one of the reasons why auto insurance is a necessary expense for car owners in this fine city and we can say the same for life insurance.

There have been significant initiatives and developments in the auto insurance industry and the city’s road safety that caught our attention and we would like to share some of them with you. Here they are:

Vision Zero for NY streets

Mayor De Blasio recently announced that he’ll be adopting Sweden’s strategy called Vision Zero to police the streets of New York. This strategy, according to Sweden’s national law, states that the number of people allowed to die in the country’s streets is zero. Yes, not even one. So the Swedish government took all necessary measures to ensure their streets are safe for pedestrians, cars, and bike riders.

In a NY Times report, Sweden did a big reform involving road constructions and speed limits since it imposed Vision Zero in 1997. De Blasio hopes to do the same so expect to see some road changes soon.

Servicemembers Insurance Relief Act (H.R. 4669) introduced

Last May 19th, a new house bill for military service members was introduced by Reps. Ed Royce and Tammy Duckworth. This bill aims for all U.S. military personnel to retain their current auto insurance when they transfer to new bases. This bill will support them when they get Permanent Change of Station or Temporary Duty Assignment orders.

When this bill is passed, our nation’s service members won’t need to worry about changing their auto insurance policies when they move from state to state. All they would need to do is to call their insurance providers to let them know about the move and the needed adjustments to their policy will be made.

New York Automobile Insurance Fraud and Premium Reduction Act introduced

Assemblyman Will Barclay also introduced this bill last April. In his post on valleynewsonline.com Barclay states this bill’s ultimate goals are:

to curb fraudulent insurance claims, and
to bring about savings to both providers and policy holders

In other words, to help decrease premium rates on auto insurance in New York City.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to seeing these initiatives materialize? We here at Kaplan are because these aspirations are for the good of the majority.

Email or call us for your auto insurance questions and we’ll help you sort it out and keep you updated on these kinds of developments as well.