Big brother is not playing games anymore. The State of California has implemented a system whereby as of October 1, 2006, the DMV begin a systematic review of the 22.4 million private cars, light trucks and motorcycles registered in the state.

If your motorcycle, car, truck or other motor vehicle is found to be uninsured you will get a 30 day warning letter. If you fail to get insurance after that the State will suspend you registration. If you are found to be driving without a proper registration, your car can be seized by the State, and you can face fines of up to $1,000.00.

This is no joke folks. If you are driving around without insurance you will eventually be dinged.

Furthermore, insurance providers are now required by the State to notify the DMV if your insurance is cancelled or expired.

What does this mean to you? It means if you are driving around with no insurance you are screwed. The State will eventually catch up to you. The days of buying insurance to get your registration and plates, only to cancel one month later are over.

If you get into a motorcycle, car or other motor vehicle accident and have no insurance, you face losing your drivers license for up to a year, fines of up to $2,000.00, and the possibility of being hit with a civil judgment which requires you to pay for the damage you have caused.

The minimum liability insurance requirements in the State are presently $10,000.00 for property damage, $15,000.00 per person, and $30,000.00 per occurrence.

The purpose of the law is to supposedly make it fair to the people that do pay for insurance, and to drive down insurance rates. I agree that it is not fair that law abiding citizens pay for insurance while 15% of the people in the State do not, however, and as usual, the insurance companies will make out like bandits with this new law. I doubt seriously that insurance rates will go down.

As a personal injury lawyer I can tell you that it pains me to see someone get hit by an uninsured motorist so it is good that the State is cracking down on this issue. However to be really fair the State should force the insurance companies to lower their rates in return for this law.

There is one other thing to note; if you are uninsured and you get into an accident that is not your fault, no will only be able to recover out of pocket losses and that is it! You will legally not be able to get compensation for pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and emotional distress, otherwise known as General Damages!

To add insult to injury you could lose your drivers license for 1 year and have to pay up to $2,000.00 in fines for driving without insurance.

The bottom line; get liability insurance. The cost of not having insurance is much greater than the cost of getting insurance. If you cannot afford liability insurance; do not drive!

By Norman Gregory Fernandez, Esq. © 2007

You are an average driver a great driver, or even a not so great of a driver, you purchase car, motorcycle, or other motor vehicle insurance to cover your car, motorcycle, or other motor vehicle in case you are in an accident; you buy uninsured motorist coverage to cover you in case you are hit by an uninsured motorist or a hit and run driver.

You have no fear because you have purchased insurance from one of the big name insurance companies, and you have been with them for many years. You figure that since you have full coverage and that you have been a dedicated and loyal customer for many years, that the big name insurance company will take care of you if you have an accident.

Suddenly one day, you are hit by a driver who runs from the scene of the accident. You are now the victim of a hit and run driver. It may have happened so fast that you were not able to get a license plate number, or be able to identify make or model of the car that hit you. In a worst case scenario, you may suffer injuries that rendered you unconscious or so injured that made it impossible to identify the car that hit you. Your car is totaled, you are injured, and you cannot work.

You then call your insurance company to report the claim, and to seek compensation under your uninsured motorist policy.

Your big name insurance company that has readily accepted your premium payments for many years then tells you “sorry we cannot cover your loss because you do not have a license plate number of the person that hit you, or their driver’s license number.” You have just basically been scammed by your big name insurance company.

They tell you “sorry if you look at the fine print in your policy on page so and so, it states that we will not cover you unless you can identify the car or driver that hit you.” You tell them that it happened so fast it was impossible to get their plate because they ran, or you tell them that you were unconscious and unable to get their information. You tell them that your insurance agent specifically told you that you would be covered for such a loss. They tell you sorry Charley, (you are shit out of luck) your policy does not cover you.

As a personal injury lawyer, I am so sick of this scam, especially from huge insurance companies that are raking in billions of dollars in profits each year, that I finally had to expose the scam, and in some cases the fraud. This article will not win me brownie points from the insurance companies that I regularly go up against, and I could care less. They know who I am, and I know who they are.

I am hereby calling on all the readers of my Blog to call their insurance companies to see if they are covered under their uninsured motorist policy, if a hit and run driver hits them and they are unable to identity the car or person that hit them. If they say no, simply go to an insurance company that will cover you. The risk of harm substantially outweighs the benefit of taking a chance. That is why you buy insurance in the first place.

You would be shocked by the fact that the top names in the insurance industry routinely deny coverage under such circumstances. They force you to prove that you were hit by an uninsured motorist. How can you do this if the person that hit you ran from the accident before you could identify them? You can’t.

There are many what I would call reputable insurance companies that will cover you under such a circumstance. I submit to you that you are better off taking your money to an insurance company that does not play the hit and run driver scam to deny you coverage.

I am not going to identify the insurance companies that play the hit and run driver scam in this article, nor the ones that don’t, for liability reasons. In a future article, I will give my opinion of the top 3 insurance companies for helping their clients, and the 3 absolute worst. As a personal injury lawyer I know which companies are good and which ones are not. I personally do not play games with the insurance companies. It they do not pay my clients what they are entitled to, I either sue or demand arbitration for my client’s. In worst case scenarios, I will sue for insurance bad faith, fraud, and other potential causes of action.

The idea of insurance is to protect you in case something happens. The last thing you need, is to find out that you have been paying premiums loyally for 20 years only to find out that the insurance company only cares about one thing; profits. They will pay you nothing, or as little as possible, so that their profits are as high as possible, by denying you coverage whenever they can, or forcing you to fight them to get you what you are legally entitled to.

As a personal injury lawyer, I can tell you now; without a competent personal injury lawyer fighting for you to get you what you are entitled to, you will absolutely never get what you are entitled to, even though you may think otherwise. The insurance companies look at unrepresented claimants as fish waiting to be fried.

Unless you are a lawyer, you really have no clue what your legal rights are when you are involved in a motor vehicle accident. That is why we personal injury lawyers exist, and that is why you would be a fool not to retain a personal injury lawyer to help you through this complex area of the law.

If you are located anywhere in the State of California and you have had a car, motorcycle, truck, or other type of motor vehicle accident, you may give me a call at 818-584-8831 for a free consultation, or go to my personal injury website at www.thepersonalinjury.com. I do not play games with the insurance companies. They will either pay on cases that I accept, or be hailed into Court; it’s their choice.

By Norman Gregory Fernandez, Esq., © 2007