Most of the time, you likely have little reason to be concerned with the insurance needs of individuals outside your own family. However, there are instances in which the insurance minimums and rates paid by others may directly impact you. For example, if you are involved in a motor vehicle accident, the kind of insurance that other drivers involved in the crash have access to may impact the amount of compensation that you receive as a result of the accident.

It is for this reason, as well as reasons related to general road safety, that the issue of minimum insurance coverage for large commercial truck drivers should matter to you. At present, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is reconsidering whether drivers of large commercial trucks should be required to have more insurance coverage than the present standard of a $750,000 liability insurance coverage minimum.

The FMCSA did not initiate this reconsideration process, but is rather responding to a provision of a Congressional transportation bill passed in 2012. The reason why this reconsideration is both generally important and particularly urgent is that this minimum insurance coverage requirement has not increased in three decades.

These days, commercial trucking accidents can cause millions of dollars in damage. When truck drivers are only required to carry a minimum of $750,000 in liability coverage, their inadequate coverage can impact the ability for individuals affected by the accident to receive proper compensation for the harm that has been caused by any given large truck crash.

Source: Cleveland.com, “Trial lawyers vs. truckers: a feud over trucks, crashes, insurance and devastation,” Stephen Koff, March 9, 2015