The U.S. Experience with No-Fault Automobile Insurance: A Retrospective

No-fault automobile-insurance regimes were the culmination of decades of dissatisfaction with the use of the traditional tort system for compensating victims of automobile accidents. They promised quicker, fairer, less-contentious, and, it was hoped, less-expensive resolution of automobile-accident injuries. This monograph considers how these plans have fared.

To many commentators and policymakers in the 1970s, it appeared as though no-fault automobile insurance was a genuinely superior policy innovation that would displace conventional tort-based automobileinsurance regimes. More than 30 years later, no-fault has lost much of its popularity among insurers and consumer groups. What happened?
This monograph provides an overview of the experience in the United States with no-fault automobile insurance and the factors that led to its decline in popularity among insurers, consumer groups, and legislatures. We explore the history of no-fault and examine its performance relative to other approaches for automobile-accident compensation. We draw from a variety of data sources, including qualitative interviews, surveys, and administrative databases, to evaluate the successes and failures of no-fault and consider its likely future in the United States.