How Hochul is standing up big-time for New York drivers

Good on Gov. Kathy Hochul for pushing to lower New Yorkers’ sky-high car-insurance costs — and defying the ambulance chasers who cash in on accidents (real and fake) at the expense of everyone else.

Hochul aims to crack down on the “combination of fraud, litigation, legal loopholes, and enforcement gaps” that leave New Yorkers every year paying “nearly $1,500 above the national average” for auto insurance.

Among her reforms: Cap the payout for drivers who were committing a crime (e.g., driving drunk) during an accident; prohibit drivers who were chiefly at fault from collecting damages; set “objective and fair medical standards” for what legally qualifies as a “serious injury” to prevent outsized payouts for minor scrapes and bruises.

She’d also empower prosecutors to go after scammers — such as the criminal rings that convince desperate “victims” to stage accidents, resulting in real, sometimes life-changing injuries.

Her reforms mirror the laws of many other (more sane) states, and would go a long way toward making New York less of a “judicial hellhole,” where litigation has become its own multibillion-dollar cottage industry that cost New Yorkers an estimated $96.3 billion in 2024.

So, of course, the slimy trial lawyers who feed big off the Empire State’s bonkers liability laws are are squealing.

The state Trial Lawyers Association slammed Hochul for “weakening victim protections” and clamed “Big Insurance” won’t do the “right thing” by lowering rates when its costs drop.

Bull: The only “victims” who need fear are those now milking the system; fraud, frivolous lawsuits and ludicrously large payouts are the biggest reasons New Yorkers pay some of the nation’s highest auto-insurance rates.

A full and rousing three cheers for the gov for putting the interests of all other New Yorkers above the trial lawyers’ vile gravy train.