Seattle Auto Insurance Company Finds New Trend

The Seattle auto insurance company, PEMCO, completed a recent poll with surprising results about how Washington state drivers are following laws. Most drivers in Washington describe themselves as law-abiding, but about 1/4 of the same drivers admit to breaking the law by using high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes even when they are not carrying the correct number of passengers in their car.

The article "Washington Drivers Confused About HOV Lanes, Admit to Abusing Lane Privileges" found on PRNewsWire.com summarizes the poll and talks about why more drivers are abusing these carpool lanes. Jon Osterberg, a spokesperson for PEMCO, says people may be abusing the HOV lanes because they are confused about when they have to follow the HOV lane rules. About 75% of respondents said they didn't know that the HOV on a particular highway was off-limits to solo drivers all the time.

Most of the time cars carrying 2 people qualify for the HOV lanes but there are even some exceptions to this where some areas require you have 3 people in your car. Failure to comply with the HOV lane rules is a moving violation and drivers face a $124 fine. The pool indicates that 61% have seen solo drivers use the HOV lanes when they were not supposed to. This can encourage more people to disobey the HOV lane laws.

Carpool lanes are used across the nation to encourage people driving together to work for less traffic on the road and over time, less emissions used in the city overall. This is especially important for high traffic cities such as Los Angeles. Los Angeles auto insurance can be higher as well because of the traffic conditions so carpool lanes hope to make driving safer and could affect rates over time.