Gov. Hochul touts proposals to lower NY car insurance rates

Evan Simko-Bednarski, New York Daily News on Jan 22, 2026

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Gov. Hochul Thursday sought to gather support for a slate of proposals to reduce the cost of automobile insurance in the Empire State.

“We’re here to continue our journey to drive down costs for New Yorkers,” Hochul told reporters on Wards Island Thursday. “When new Yorkers are paying their bills, there’s yet another bill that keeps going up and up and up — and that is the cost of their car insurance.”

New York State residents pay an average of $4,000 a year for car insurance, Hochul said, roughly $1,500 more than the national average. In Brooklyn and the Bronx, according to the Governor’s office, that average can climb to $6,000 annually.

A set of proposals first laid out in Hochul’s State of the State address last week would seek to reduce that cost, by cracking down on insurance fraud, limiting the definition of “serious injury,” and limiting payouts to drivers operating a vehicle illegally or deemed “mostly at fault” for a collision.

“For those driving without a license, those driving drunk or committing a felony at the time of the crash, they should not get a payout for their behavior,” Hochul said.

The proposals would also increase funding for investigations of insurance fraud by the New York State Police and the state’s Department of Financial Services.

Hochul’s office reported 1,729 instances of staged crashes — intentional collisions seeking insurance payouts — in 2023, the most recently available data.

That same year, insurance companies reported 38,270 incidents of suspected fraud, according to the state — up from 24,238 in 2020.

Hochul also said she will push to rewrite the legal threshold for “serious injuries” under state law, an effort at tort reform to limit expensive litigation.

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