OOIDA, others welcome demise of Nevada minimum insurance bill
A bad bill in Nevada to double the minimum liability insurance requirement for “intrastate-only freight” succumbed to the force of trucking and insurance groups.
Nevada requires $750,000 minimum liability insurance for affected truck drivers.
Senate lawmakers voted 11-10 last month to advance a bill to the Assembly that would eventually increase the liability insurance minimum for affected Nevada truck drivers to $1.5 million.
With less than a month remaining in the regular session, the Assembly Growth & Infrastructure Committee acted May 5 to add the bill to its Thursday, May 8 committee hearing schedule.
At the start of the Thursday hearing, the committee chairman announced that the bill – SB180 – was instead pulled from consideration. The decision is a likely death knell for the legislation.
Bill is nothing but bad news
The minimum liability insurance bill was met with stiff, vocal opposition along the way from the trucking industry.
The Nevada Trucking Association and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association issued multiple Calls to Action to their Nevada members on SB180. Both groups also communicated to state lawmakers how the bill would devastate truck drivers.
Nevada Trucking Association President Paul Enos told lawmakers it is simply a bad bill.
“The data and practical implications reveal this measure to be an arbitrary and burdensome overreach that will harm Nevada’s small businesses and trucking industry without clear justification,” Enos previously testified.
He also talked with Land Line Now about how the minimum liability insurance bill is attempting to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. Enos said a better option would be to leave any changes in liability requirements for commercial vehicles up to Congress.
In communication with the Association’s Nevada members, OOIDA noted that any increase in minimum insurance requirements is wholly unnecessary, would do nothing to improve highway safety, would needlessly jeopardize countless blue-collar jobs and would destroy many small and family-owned businesses.
The American Property Casualty Insurance Association highlighted the difficulty SB180 would create for truck drivers to simply get insurance.
“Most insurers will not write coverage above $1 million on the primary layer,” the group communicated to Nevada lawmakers. “In practice, SB180 would require truckers to get two separate policies to get to $1.5 million.”
They warned that the headaches caused by the bill would “increase the cost for all goods that Nevadans buy, since everything travels by truck.”
Truck, insurance groups win major victory
After losing the Senate battle by a one-vote margin, OOIDA President Todd Spencer committed to defeat over SB180. The Nevada Trucking Association and the American Property Casualty Insurance Association shared the resolve.
Doug Morris, OOIDA director of state government affairs, said bill advocates severely underestimated the groups’ tenacity to fight the bill.
“This bill was predicted to easily pass both houses of the legislature. It passed the Senate by one vote and was pulled by the Assembly,” Morris said. “This legislation would have resulted in higher prices for every business in Nevada that relies on trucks to deliver their goods and services.”
He added that the cumulative effort to quash the bill shows that when trucking groups and supporters work together, they can achieve anything. LL