COMPULSORY INSURANCE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 45, 22 February 1930, Page 26

COMPULSORY INSURANCE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, 22nd January. Ten States are now grappling with the subject of automobile insurance legislation.

. The failure of the compulsory law in Massachusetts was admitted before the annual convention of the Insurance Federation of ; America recently by the official administering it. An increase in motor-car accidents in the State he ascribed to tho new law. In the first year of its enforcement, he said, 25 per cent, more persons were injured in the State than in tho previous year. The official believed 'that the sense of individual responsibility for the operation of automobiles had been lifted by the law, and that insurance companies, as a result, mere expected to step in and relieve drivers of all civil liability. Owners of cars felt that they could "take a chance," and "hit-and-run" drivers were becoming moro and more common. A Connecticut State Senator described tha financial resDonaibility leiris-

lation of his State, which has also been inaugurated in one or two other States, as a substitute plan for motorcar n S ks. A survey of all automobile accidents in Connecticut in 1928 showed that 70,5 per cent, of them were due to drivers, where the burden belongs. According to this disciplinary legislation, 85 por cent, of all persons classified supplied tho responsibility without question. In the annual report of the Insurance federation, it was held that compulsory automobile insurance was "obviously a measure detrimental to the policy holders and to the insunyice business." Tho Massachusetts law, said the secretary, had a direct effect on mortality in removing the incentive to careful driving.