‘Crash and burn:’ The epidemic of uninsured drivers affecting your Florida car insurance

Uninsured drivers on Florida and Jacksonville’s roadways are affecting your car insurance premiums and leaving those who sometimes only have the state minimum requirements for insurance paying thousands of dollars out of pocket for the damages in a crash, according to an Action News Jax investigation.

“We just put $6,000 as a down payment and then we have another deficit coming with $7,000 that we just didn’t have at the time,” Dan Hazelton said.

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Hazelton was hit by an uninsured driver without collision coverage himself, which isn’t required under the state of Florida’s insurance minimums. That crash was on October 12 by an Interstate 95 overpass on Jacksonville’s Southside. Hazelton was left with thousands in out-of-pocket repairs.

That story is similar to Duncan Corbitt’s, who told Action News Jax he’s been in crashes twice with uninsured drivers over the years, once when a man’s prosthetic foot got stuck under the gas pedal, unable to brake.

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“Uninsured motorist [coverage] in Florida is only good for injuries or if you get killed,” Corbitt said. “I did not get my deductible back and all he got was a ticket.”

If you don’t have uninsured motorist coverage yourself, which isn’t required under law in Florida, you could also be hit with pricey medical bills and loss of wages if hit by an uninsured driver.

Action News Jax told you in June when Eric Wingerter’s son was hit by a suspected drunk and uninsured driver while walking out of work in Atlantic Beach. Now he tells Action News Jax he’s pursuing a lawsuit, though he was unable to comment on details due to the ongoing litigation.

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“[My son is] missing at least six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks of work because of his injuries. And that’s money,” Wingerter told Action News Jax after the crash in June. “That’s car payments, you know, that’s gas, it’s food, you know, it’s anything for a 19-year-old kid.”

Hazelton, Corbitt and Wingerter are just three people locally in Jacksonville dealing with an issue that’s become a major problem across the Sunshine State.

According to a recent study by the Insurance Information Institute , based on the most recent end-of-year data in 2022, it’s estimated that 15.9% of Florida drivers are on the roadways without insurance, compared to just 14% as the national average.

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A recent Insurance Research Council Study is even more concerning, estimating 20.4% of Florida drivers – or one in five – are driving uninsured.

Vicky Zelen, the president of Zelen Risk Solutions, told Action News Jax both may still be gross underestimates, as those are the only known uninsured drivers on our roadways.

“Forty percent of all the people driving around either have the state minimum limits or they don’t have any insurance at all, and so they are still getting an accident and they’re still collecting but they’re not paying into the system,” Zelen said.

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Essentially, if an insured driver and an uninsured driver get in a crash, the insured driver or their policy, depending on coverage, end up covering both their own damage and the uninsured party’s regardless of fault.

Ultimately, that’s a key reason for Florida having the 2nd most expensive car insurance in the nation for full coverage. That’s an average premium of $4,326, according to a recent Forbes study .

“Insurance is a big shared pool, and so instead of 100% of the drivers paying 100% of the premium, you have 60% of the drivers paying 100% of the premium, and that premium just keeps going up,” Zelen said.

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Zelen added that to her, the solution is simple:

“If you don’t buy insurance, if you were to hit me on accident and hurt me, then you shouldn’t really be able to collect and that would be the end of the whole problem that we’re having,” Zelen said.

Action News Jax reached out to state representative Danny Burgess, who unsuccessfully tried passing a car insurance reform bill back in 2021 to change Florida from a no-fault to at-fault state , aimed at ending personal injury lawsuits, to see if there are any plans on the horizon for car insurance reform in Florida. We are still waiting to hear back.

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