The minimum insurance requirements for interstate motor carriers have remained unchanged for over three decades. The $750,000 minimum liability coverage for interstate trucking was set in 1980 and continued in by the Reagan Administration when setting other insurance requirements in 1985. Adjusted for the rate of medical inflation, the $750,000 minimum would be over $4.4 million today.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has a pending rule making proposal to adjust the interstate truck and bus minimum insurance requirements for inflation, and then update it every four years thereafter. Truckers with the least adequate safety compliance and financial responsibility are stirring up vocal opposition, claiming it is all about “blood sucking lawyers” and disregarding the impact on lives and families devastated in truck crashes. Frequently, injured victims and their families cannot get full restitution for their medical bills and lost wages, much less non-economic damages. This issue most often arises in cases involving seriously injured victims and cases that involving several vehicles with multiple passengers.
Insurance companies vet trucking companies safety policies before underwriting, and higher policies mean they will do more to vet the trucking companies before they provide insurance. A company with no insurance cannot operate legally, and shippers will not use them. So trucking companies will either operate safely to get insurance or they won’t operate at all.
Please help show your support this rule making by clicking here to send a comment to the FMCSA. The deadline to submit comments is February 26, 2015.