I have a friend who lives in Los Angeles. She grew up in Houston where I did and we went to the same school, but she’s going to UCLA for college and has been living there for about three years. I remember when she called me to complain about how high everything was priced in California, and I was pretty surprised to hear some of the numbers she reeled off. California is certainly one of the states that has the highest cost of living, and the small apartment I pay for here would probably be about two square feet if I moved to Los Angeles. That’s one of the reasons that California’s state governement headed by the governator himself has made some great strides into setting up a low cost auto insurance program for Californians who are hurt by the high prices of auto insurance there.

It’s true that there are a lot of people on the road without car insurance, which is why having uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is important. For some people, there really isn’t a choice. Many people have to choose between paying their car insurance and paying their rent, and, well–high performance cars are great and all, but who wants to live in one?

In recent times, California has started a program for lower income Californians called the Low Cost Automobile Insurance Program. This allowed these drivers to get car insurance coverage for less than four hundred bucks a year, around a dollar a day. While this low cost auto insurance did not give such extra coverage categories such as comprehensive and collision coverage, it is a lot more generous in its coverage amounts than are other types of car insurance coverage programs for low income residents in other states. Californians had a lot more to gain than most.

Before, this program was only in effect in twenty of California’s counties. However, yesterday there was an expansion and twenty two more counties are added, so now a total of forty two counties offer this low cost auto insurance program to their residents. That doesn’t mean all of the state is covered. California has a total of fifty eight counties, so there are twelve that are left out. Most of these are in the rural mountainous areas of the state. The prices in these areas aren’t as high, so it’s not so bad, but all the same the state’s commissioner of insurance says that he expects that the low cost auto insurance program will be available to the residents of those counties as well before the end of the 2007 fiscal year.

The cost for most participants in this program is only $262 dollars a year, which you would have to be very very preferred and discounted to get off the program. This is a big help to a lot of lower income residents who have credit problems which have caused huge raises in their car insurance premiums since the new use of credit reports began years ago. If you are in California and find yourself in one of these counties and unable to pay for insurance for your high performance car even after taking all of my advice, then by all means, jump on!