California Insurance

Californians’ home addresses are key to determining their automobile insurance rates - although a 1988 initiative to reform the insurance said, should not be the case.

People in the cities of the rule pay more than those in rural areas, people living in poor neighborhoods usually pay more than those who go into the enclaves.

Lawyers for the city of San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles, in collaboration with several groups, said Thursday a petition filed by the State Insurance Commission John Garamendi, the commissioner and asked him to require insurers to perceive how point man the reader is not where they live. Relying on geography, wrongly punished for low-income people and minorities, she said.

Garamendi, assumed his duties on January 6, he said he agreed with the political groups and launched public consultations this summer to revise the rules, a process that perhaps more than a year.

But insurers who have fought this problem before the courts and won, say their approach is reasonable and lawful.

Verification of insurance companies in the number of claims and costs for claims in an area determined to put rates, “said Bill Sirola, a spokesman for State Farm Insurance in Sacramento. “That’s what insurance, it is measuring risk.”

The cities and groups Garamendi asked to amend regulations, they say it allows insurers to circumvent Proposition 103, an initiative in 1988 called driving record, annual mileage and a long experience of driving on the factors most important in setting prices.

“As can be fair?” asked Oakland City Attorney John Russo a press conference in San Francisco City Hall. “Why should a young man in the Vale Fruit to pay over 30 per cent for insurance” as someone with a similar record, lives in Montclair, he said, citing hypothetical examples distributed by groups policies.

The examples have shown that the same drivers pay $ 3389 per year in Montclair, compared to $ 4417 in Fruit Vale, Oakland, two districts from a few kilometres. In South Central Los Angeles, the driver of the annual rates, amount to $ 7844, but until the coast of Santa Barbara, Tony, the rate would be $ 2173

“What you basically here is the racial profiling by another name,” San Francisco City attorney Dennis Herrera said.

But similar arguments can not influence the courts two years ago.

In December 2000, the State Court of Appeals in San Francisco unanimously decided that drivers with a home address a decisive factor to ensure rate is fair, because “the territory is an important factor in the risk loss than any other single factor. In March 2001, the state Supreme Court decided, 4-3 against consulting an average duty of this decision.

The cities and groups to return to the issue because they think Garamendi was elected during the last year, as a consumer is older Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush to implement the regulations, they said that insurers allowed to Rock Prop. 103.

Garamendi, spokesman said he thinks driving consumer registration must take precedence over the address of his house when setting prices.

“It’s not fair, easy to use a zip code to see that the rates of pay, because someone with a perfectly clean (direction) to put more Admission is based solely on where they live” , Said Norman Williams, a spokesman for Garamendi. “He believes that groups have sufficient evidence to investigate this case.