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    • State Senator Savino Looks To Stop Auto Insurance Evasion


    by on Jun 15th, 2011

    photo credit: swanksalot via flickr

    Have you ever been annoyed at seeing people, often with out-of-state plates, using a vacation home or another person’s address in order to pay less for car insurance?

    The practice, known as auto rate evasion, has become increasingly common as transplanted New Yorkers offer friends and relatives back home the use of their out-of-town addresses. A consequence of rate evasion is that it unfairly raises everyone’s premiums.

    If State Senator Diane Savino has her way, residents of the Empire State who fraudulently register their vehicles elsewhere could face felony charges.

    silive.com reports that the bill, which has passed the New York State Senate with the help of Savino and her colleagues in the Independent Democratic Conference, would make auto rate evasion a Class E Felony.

    “It seems that you would have to go to Scranton before you find more cars with Pennsylvania plates than Staten Island,” Ms. Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) told silive.com. “This legislation would provide much-needed tools to fight auto insurance evasion and make sure everyone plays by the same rules.”

    Senator Diane Savino represents District 23, which includes much of the North Shore of Staten Island. In Brooklyn, District 23 includes Coney Island, as well as parts of Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Borough Park and Bensonhurst.

    silive: Albany Roundup

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    • Guest

      that’s hard to enforce. how would you know if so and so in fact lives elsewhere and thus prefer to register his/her car out of state?

      • nolastname

        I was wondering the same thing. Can computers be programmed to run cross info? One address, 10 cars? The home owner (Mr. Nice Guy)
        could also be fined for allowing the practice. If a person registers to vote, pays taxes or numerous other possibilities from their real address can DMV pick that up eventually?
        And when one of these folks is in an accident can the address slip be picked up then? Do these people have out of state and in state licenses also?

        • http://www.nedberke.com Ned Berke

          Excellent questions!!

          • Adsan

            Here is the scenario – If you live in NY more than 8 months in the year, you should register and insurance your vehicle in NY. Thus you are committing Insurance rate evasion. Having a vacation home as your address in a different state is fraud. Although you own the house, you still don’t live there and thus it is FRAUD. If you work full-time in NY, pay federal taxes in NY, children go to school in NY, it is clear that you don’t live in another state. Just this information here should be clear enough to officials that FRAUD is taking place. its not hard at all…as with everything in our capitalistic society, if money is not talking, then we are not walking.

    • Beachvac

      a simple solution to this problem is to do what other towns in major cities (nj for instance) do. require for all on street parking after a certain hour (say 10pm or 11pm) that the vehicle have a resident parking sticker which can only be issued to a vehicle that is registered in that state. the state recieves more money from vehicle registations and for the parking sticker.

    • No_Pah_King

      This is BS and I doubt it will fly. If I own a house somewhere else I am within my legal rights to register the vehicle that I own to any address I want. Look at it like this, I own a house in NY & NJ. I have a NY cell phone number registered on my NJ address because lets say hypothetically there are less taxes to pay. Another example is I want to purchase something from Newegg. If I ship it ot my NJ address I will have to pay sales tax, if I ship I ship it to NY I dont have to pay tax. What am I doing wrong? Should I inconvinience myself and ship it to an address where I have to pay more at the end.

      While I do agree that it is a problem when someone registers at a fake address or at an address that doesnt belong to them.

    • Barkingspider7

      This should have been done years ago. Too many people pull this stunt and it is just wrong. If you live in NYC, if NYC is your primary address and you spend more than 8 months per year here, then you register your vehicle in NY and pay NY taxes, not NJ or PA.

    • http://www.iqcarinsurance.com/ Jan Bibian

      As far as I know, in Florida you can’t driver more than 90 days with out of state registration. Surely something similar is in place in NY?