Of course the title immediately elicits thought of insurance for driving in Mexico – but this time we are talking about getting insurance in the U.S. for the time you are there when you primarily live in Mexico.

Thanks to computers and insurance lobbyists most states now have up to the minute information on the status of any car registered in their state and probably any other.

When I first started driving MANY years ago drivers were insured NOT cars – after all the car doesn’t make any mistakes or drive without a human. But in the infinite wisdom and greed of insurance companies at some point (further back then most remember) they changed the policy to insuring cars NOT drivers.

The logic behind this was of course GREED! Statistically they realized there are more cars than drivers in as much as many own several cars – so hey we will make more insuring cars rather than drivers – keeping in mind they certainly want to know EVERYTHING about the owner (driver) of the insured car(s).

OK so by now we are all pretty accustomed to thinking of insurance as it relates to our vehicle(s) rather than that of us drivers being insured. Now there are people that drive uninsured cars. This not only cuts into the insurance companies revenues, but the States as well in as much as the offending cars often are not currently registered with legal tags etc. And the insurance companies have lobbied state governments to enforce the requirement of the cars being insured, licensed, registered, smog tested etc.

The insurance companies have gained support from the populace by suggesting uninsured motorists’ costs all of “us” as someone has to pay for these accidents – but now they also have an assessment in their policies for being covered for uninsured motorist’s accidents – so we pay for this anyway.

They also have been working on requiring insurance to have no lapse in coverage even if you park the car 6 or more months out of the year or take it to Mexico where you insure it there. Man what a greedy bunch they are.

Let me write right off that I have no problem with, and I willing to pay for, my car(s) to be insured when I am in the country and driving them on U.S. highways. But to insist that we have our car(s) that are parked or covered with Mexican insurance while in Mexico insured in the U.S. is nothing less than robbery – I mean we are paying for insurance for a non-used vehicle. Is it just me or would you agree that this is essentially stealing from people?

We should be able to call or email our insurance carrier to reinstate an insurance policy when we plan on being driving our vehicle(s) in the United States – plain and simple. But, this is mostly problematic or not appealing to more greedy motives.

In California if you have a car on blocks in a garage to say rebuild sometime in the future and that future becomes years you will either continue to keep the plates and registration current or pay heavy fines, more than the cost of the ongoing registration and license fees for allowing the plates to expire. Basically these are fees and red tape that exist because you own something that potentially could be driven on a public road. This smacks of a form of usury in my way of thinking.

In a similar vein, here in Las Vegas housing values have been reduced almost across the board by 30% and more since last year – but try and get the state to roll-back your property taxes; that is not going to happen – another case of paying for something that does not exist in the context of how it was established (tax based on value). A car that will be not be driven on the roadways needing to be insured or a property tax based on more than your house is worth – by a lot.

It seems to me that these money collectors have little regard for much beyond gathering as much money as possible – does the word criminal fit here?

So the tags on our license plates expire at the end of this month (essentially in a week). We have been making phone calls and attempting to get everything in order to be able to LEGALLY drive on U.S. roadways with an insurance motor vehicle – but they are NOT making it easy on us.

There is a new twist by the way. In Colorado we can sign a waiver to not claim damage to our vehicle (and bodies I suppose) when either sustains damage via an uninsured motorists accident. Truthfully I didn’t know our insurance company would cover us under that scenario before. It seems like the risk is fairly minimal considering how heavy handed they seem to be about one having insurance.

We suggested to the carrier for our vehicles (Geico) that we happily pay for insurance before driving in the United States; but no after much ado we finally settled on paying for six months and then canceling anytime prior where upon they refund the balance. I can guess that this will not be a clean deal and there will be fees/penalties for early cancellation – but in any case some monies will be refunded.

I suspect this isn’t going to last because the States will balk about issuing tags for a year when there is a possibility (for sure in our case) that the legally tagged vehicle is uninsured (albeit parked or not driven within the United States.

Honestly I think they could all get it together whereby we could purchase insurance to cover our time in the United States but they want to collect money for nothing every chance they get. I should add so we are clear on this hazy mess that we only carry liability insurance so we needn’t argue the point of whether we would expect recompense if our parked vehicle(s) were damaged in some way (those acts of God and delinquent children).

I can see by the word counter that I am over my self-imposed word limit – whew I feel better; how about you? I hate red tape and insurance companies. I won’t get into how all effort is made by insurance companies to not pay for accident damage – perhaps Michael Moore would like to do a “Sicko” film on automobile insurance and car registration – I could help…Stay Tuned!