North Carolina’s House Finance Committee has approved a bill that proposes granting driving privileges to those who can not prove that they live in the country legally, similarly to what California, Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, and a few other states have done over the past couple of months.
One of the main reasons why states decide to allow undocumented immigrants to apply for a driver’s license is to improve road safety and provide better protection to people involved in car accidents, but the bill proposed by North Carolina’s lawmakers could bring one extra benefit. Representative of several insurance companies say that House Bill 328 could bring auto insurance costs down, mainly because it would help increase the number of licensed drivers on roads, which would result in fewer accidents involving uninsured drivers. Given that damage and injury costs resulting from accidents with uninsured drivers are covered by the insurance coverage of the licensed driver, taking unlicensed drivers off the roads would definitely lead to lower insurance costs for all drivers.
What’s more, insurance industry observers say that licensed drivers are safer drivers in general, paying more attention to the rules of the road and practicing defensive driving habits. This is because they complete driver’s ed courses that help them learn how to avoid aggressive driving and how important it is to obey traffic laws, and they are also tested by authorities before they can obtain a license, which means that that the state makes sure they are capable of operating a motor vehicle safely.
Another factor that is expected to play a role in reducing insurance costs once this bill is passed into law is the increased number of customers that it will bring to insurers. With hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants needing auto insurance after being allowed to obtain driver’s licenses, insurance companies are bound to bring insurance premiums down, in an effort to prevent consumers from taking their business to their competitors.
According to some estimates, there are about 325,000 undocumented immigrants living in North Carolina at the moment, with most of those old enough to drive doing it without registering their vehicles and without purchasing auto insurance.
The driving privileges that illegal immigrants would get with this legislation would be restricted, though. Their licenses would be marked with the “Legal Presence No Lawful Status” designation, which means that they would not be able to use them to vote or apply for some state benefits.