You might think that the most expensive place to insure a car is California, with the high amount of expensive cars, all brand new, or Texas, with their very strict insurance laws. You might think that…but you'd be wrong. In fact, the state at the top of the list when it comes to expensive auto insurance is Louisiana.
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Insurance.com's mid-year pricing report for 2007 showed that the average annual premium for auto insurance is Louisiana is $2,740, in spite of a 6.1% rate decrease in 2005, and a further decrease of 3.4% in 2006. Apparently, even the state's tough laws against uninsured motorists don't have much of an impact on their rates, either.
Why is Louisiana so expensive? It's a veritable vortex of all the factors that increase the number of accidents and drive up rates: drunk drivers, heavy traffic, poor roads, and a lot of wet weather, to be specific. As well, it's got a greater frequency of claims than many other states - drivers in Louisiana are happy to see each other in court.
How much do these factors really affect local drivers? Here are some examples:
- Drunk Driving: Louisiana has drive-through liquor stores, and a culture that celebrates excess drinking.
- Wet weather: Louisiana is home to four of the ten rainiest cities in the US (New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Lake Charles).
- Poor Roads: Ask any trucker, Louisiana's highways are the worst in the country
- Personal Behavior: Residents of Louisiana aren't significantly worse drivers than people in other parts of the country, but they are less likely to wear seatbelts.
Other elements that make Louisiana's car insurance the most expensive include high insurance taxes, and the number of automobiles that were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina more than two years ago. As well, there's the classification of Louisiana as an "urban driving" state, despite the fact that most of the cities are not particularly large, and many of the roads are two-lane streets.
Of all of these factors, however, it's the high number of claims that has the most impact. State Farm, for example, reports that in 2006 Louisiana had more than double the bodily injury claims and a third more property damage claims than the company-wide total, and the highest number of claims of the five-state zone that also includes Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
Despite all this, Louisiana has some of the toughest insurance-related statutes on the books: cars can be towed if drivers are caught driving without insurance and liability coverage is mandatory. As well, the state's uninsured motorist population is estimated at a mere 10% - significantly lower than neighboring states Texas (16%) and Mississippi (26%).
Is there any good news about Louisiana auto insurance, you may wonder? In fact, there is. Statistically, you are significantly less likely to hit a deer in Louisiana than in any nearby state.