The Indiana legislature has passed a bill to prohibit municipalities from charging fees for having local police and fire departments respond to traffic accidents.

Approved unanimously by both houses on March 5 and sent to Gov. Mitch Daniels, the measure was supported by insurance trade groups, who say the costs of police responding to an accident are already covered by taxes and an additional fee is simply a cost burden for consumers and insurers.

Joseph Thesing, National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies state affairs director, said the insurance industry is "cautiously optimistic" that the measure in Indiana will be signed by Gov. Daniels.

The bill runs counter to recent action by the National Conference of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL), which decided at its latest meeting not to pass model legislation banning emergency response fees.

Greg LaCost, assistant vice president and regional manager for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), in describing how the fees are typically assessed, said that after an accident, municipalities will either send bills to the insurance company or directly to the individual involved in the accident.

Jeffrey Brewer, spokesman for PCI, said, "What we're seeing more often is they're actually sending the bill directly to the insurer."

Mr. LaCost said this is because of the perceived notion that insurers have "deep pockets" to absorb the fees.

Jeffrey Junkas, spokesman for the American Insurance Association (AIA), said these accident response fees are not covered by a standard insurance contract.

While policies will cover responses in the event of a catastrophic accident--for example, if an ambulance responds--they generally will not cover a police officer responding to an accident to take information, he said.

Mr. Junkas said the fees assessed by municipalities can range from $200 to $500.

Mr. LaCost said that one particular location in northern Kentucky charges a fee for a police response, an additional fee if the officer had to drive to the scene, and then additional charges for every 15 minutes spent on the scene. Since insurance policies do not cover these fees, Mr. LaCost said that consumers could be forced to pay them.

Insurance industry representatives said in interviews that the idea to establish these fees is being driven by vendors who are selling services associated with the charging of accident response fees.

Cost Recovery Corp., one vendor cited by the industry representatives, argues on its Web site: "The majority of services provided at the scene of motor vehicle 'crashes' are outside the scope of basic fire protection, criminal protection, investigations and apprehension of criminals, the primary functions of safety service departments."

The Web site adds that raising taxes to cover the cost of police and fire department responses to traffic accidents "is an ineffective use of tax dollars, considering the true financial beneficiaries of safety services' quick response, accident investigations and reporting are the insurance companies."

Mr. Junkas said that combating the issue of accident response fees was not high on the industry's agenda initially because the vendors were only active on a small and limited basis. "As they've expanded their efforts, it's been coming up higher and higher on the radar screen for insurers," he said.

So far, Mr. Junkas said, Missouri and Pennsylvania have passed legislation banning the fees, and between 15 and 20 other states are considering a ban.

Mr. Thesing of NAMIC testified on behalf of the three national trade associations at the NCOIL meeting. He said that NCOIL was unable to pass a model law in part because state laws vary with respect to the rights of local municipalities to establish such fees, and an effective model for all states was not possible. The industry then decided to fight the issue state by state, he said.

Calls to NCOIL, Gov. Daniels' office and Cost Recovery Corp. were not returned.

Special Reports /

Indiana Legislature Votes Accident Response Fee Ban

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