Recently, the North Carolina Rate Bureau has tried to clarify it's rule regarding verifiable driving experience on an auto insurance policy. The current rule states that only verifiable U.S., Canada or Puerto Rican driving experience counts towards driving experience. Otherwise, an inexperienced operator surcharge will be applied to the policy.
The rule was meant to make auto insurance more expensive to foreign drivers who couldn't prove previous driving experience. Ok, so that should have been a pretty easy rule to enforce, right? Wrong. The problem was the word 'verifiable'. Although the North Carolina DMV reports a driver's original license date, approximately 35 other states DO NOT. So even though the rule was meant to apply to foreign drivers, most out of state drivers were viewed as inexperienced drivers and forced to pay higher premiums.
So the clarification on the rule states that: "If the MVR does not show conclusively the number of years of driving experience, the insurer may determine the number of years of driving experience based upon information provided by the applicant."
You gotta love the rate bureau. How vague is that? "...information provided by the applicant." Are you kidding me? That brings us right back, full circle to where we started. The original rule was meant to weed out fraudulent foreign drivers who were giving the agents falsified, out of county documents. Now we're going to start accepting information from our out of state applicants? And what information, pray tell, are we agents to deem acceptable? It seems the rate bureau has left that up to each individual agency. So we'll have thousands of agents applying the rule thousands of different ways.
Great clarification. Okay, I'm done complaining.
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