People are cutting back on everything that's not absolutely essential - and that includes car insurance. North Carolina, for example, estimates that the number of uninsured motorists might be as high as 18 percent - about one in every five drivers. 

Of course, it used to be a lot higher. Everywhere.

Before the 1980s, in most states, you could legally drive without insurance - and many people did. Understandably. Insurance is expensive and if you think about it, you rarely need it. Maybe never. Why pay several hundred dollars a year (thousands, over a period of ten or twenty years) to some insurance company when the odds are very highly favorable, if you're not irresponsible or inept, that you will never be involved in anything worse than a minor fender bender? A fender bender which you could easily just pay for out of pocket - if you hadn't forked over all that money to the insurance company. 

Today, we are pretty much forced to buy insurance, whether we think it's a good investment or not - and whether we're good drivers or terrible ones.

The worst part of this is because we're all forced to buy insurance, insurance costs a fortune. We are captive "customers" whose only choice is Company A or Company B - no third option to just say "no thanks" to both of them. That virtually eliminates any real pressure to tamp down costs, because, well, what are you gonna do? 

Insurance companies today are as much a cartel as Big Oil - only worse, because Big Oil, at least, does give us the option of riding a bicycle or moving close to the train station and walking. You don't have to buy gas. 

But you do have to buy insurance. 

Again, why? 

Most of us are responsible people who do not leave others holding the bag for our (usually minor) mistakes. Why must we be held to the standard of the lowest common denominator - the relative handful of bad apples who ruin it for everyone else? 

And one of the wormiest of these rotten apples nowadays is the unlicensed, uninsured and often drunk as a loon illegal alien. It is a huge problem in states all over the country that have been flooded with Third World peasants who do not share the American hyper-caution about alcohol consumption and driving or respect for "the law" (remember: they are here illegally) and who often drive $800 rolling wrecks that should have gone on to better things (like recycled beer cans) years ago. 

So, Captain Corona, high as the July sun, breezes through a red and plows right into your brand-new $50,000 BMW in his $800 hooptie. And he has no driver's license, let alone insurance - or more than the $5.73 change he's got in his wallet after splitting that $20 for the 12-pack he just drank before creaming you. 

The government, naturally, won't do a thing about him. But it'll make sure you pay through the nose to have top-flight coverage that takes the presence of him into account. Cost of doing business - charged directly to us. 

Me gusta! 

Well, not really. 

If the illegals could be dealt with (easily done by mercilessly fining employers who hire them) and the relative handful of American Morons who can't drive properly were either re-educated (if possible) or compelled to take the bus if not, the manufactured necessity for mandatory universal insurance would disappear. Fender benders could be dealt with as they used to be dealt with - by the people involved settling it between themselves. People who felt the need for insurance to cover the possibility of a major wreck would be free to buy a policy - one that would cost a lot less than a current one, too, since the insurance companies would have to be competitive. 

But until we get our heads screwed on right again as a country - or start a new one, from the ground up, if that's what it takes - this scenario's about as likely as the end of the income tax or the return of a triumphant Elvis, trimmed and tan.