YAKIMA, Wash. -- Something chilling: About one in six drivers nationwide will be uninsured by next year, according to an industry estimate.

Something more chilling: Washington state is already there, according to the same report. And anecdotal evidence suggests the rate is even higher in Yakima County.

Among those who have studied the trend, there's a consensus there are pockets in the state with higher rates of uninsured, including Yakima.

You don't have to tell Roberta Growney, who used to love driving.

Her 1995 Mustang, which she considered a final gift from her dying mother, was destroyed last September when an uninsured driver rear-ended her as she slowed to make a turn on Nob Hill Boulevard.

She had uninsured motorist coverage, but it doesn't cover the hundreds of dollars of medical bills she continues to rack up each month for neck pain. The idea that any given car might be uninsured has taken the joy from driving.

"I have panic attacks," she said. "If it's rush hour, I'll go out of my way on residential streets just to get home. And I won't leave again for an hour just to make sure there's no traffic."

The number of victims such as Growney is expected only to increase. The rate of uninsured motorists is going to grow worse in the coming years, according to the Insurance Research Council, a Pennsylvania-based industry group. Earlier this year, the council predicted theeconomy would push more motorists to go uninsured. It also ranked Washington as 10th worst, with an uninsured rate of 16 percent, or roughly one in six.

Despite a $513 fine for those caught driving uninsured in Washington, there's no reason to question the report's predictions, said state Rep. Dean Takko, D-Longview, who has twice sponsored legislation aimed at curbing the problem.

"Everybody's cutting back on everything," he said. "And people are still going to want to drive whether they have insurance or not."

The state Office of the Insurance Commissioner doesn't keep statistics on the percentage of uninsured drivers by county. Nor does the Insurance Research Council, the Northwest Insurance Council, the Washington State Patrol or anybody else.

But certainly there are thousands. In 2008, the State Patrol cited 969 uninsured drivers in the Yakima area. Yakima County Sheriff's deputies wrote 1,473 citations for uninsured drivers. But it's impossible to know from those numbers how many such drivers are on the road.

"We wouldn't have any way of telling you how many people are actually uninsured," State Patrol Sgt. Ed McAvoy of Yakima said.

One indicator may be employment.

"There's a very strong correlation between unemployment rate and the uninsured motorist rate," Northwest Insurance Council spokesman Darrin Sanger said.

As of February the unemployment rate in Yakima County was 10.5 percent, compared with 8.4 percent statewide.

But a job doesn't assure a motorist will be insured.

"It's always been a problem," Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin said. "We have so many lower-wage jobs in the Yakima Valley, and insurance is always a tough burden."

The area's rural character -- and undocumented immigrants who come here to work in agriculture -- also is believed to play a role. The National Agricultural Workers Survey estimated in 2007 that 50 percent of farm workers are in the country illegally.

Getting a driver's license and registering a vehicle don't require proof of legal status in Washington, so undocumented immigrants can obtain both a license and insurance. But a desire to remain under the radar may mean that some of them go uninsured.

And the poverty that often goes along with being an undocumented laborer is also believed to be a factor.

There's no way to separate the legal residency issue from the issue of poverty when it comes to car insurance, Sanger said.

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About 20.7 percent of Yakima County residents fall below the poverty line, according to the most recent U.S. Census numbers. That's nearly double the statewide rate of 11.8 percent.

And those numbers -- collected from 2005 to 2007 -- are probably worse now that the national economy has soured. Yakima attorney Terry Abeyta, who represents victims of uninsured motorists, said the problem has increased significantly.

"When people are faced with the decision of, 'What do I pay for: the house payment, rent or food on the table?' and something has to go, often times it's the insurance," Abeyta said.

The higher-than-average rate of uninsured motorists means higher premiums, but exactly how much more is an elusive number. Insurance officials contacted for this story said a wide range of factors determines premiums.

Local auto insurance costs, on average, about $400 for a six-month premium that includes full coverage. That's assuming the driver is male, 30 years or older, or a female, 24 years or older, with good credit and a clean driving record.

Dennis Hasslinger, a State Farm insurance agent in Yakima, said the Valley's high percentage of two-lane roads makes insurance rates more expensive in this part of the state.

"Two-lane roads are more dangerous than highways. That we know for sure," Hasslinger said. "Look at the accidents we see in the Lower Valley."

Washington doesn't require proof of insurance to register a vehicle, as 25 other states and the District of Columbia do.

Stephanie Marquis, a spokeswoman for the state Office of the Insurance Commissioner, said there's not much the state can do about uninsured motorists under current law.

"It would take a legislative fix to put in some kind of change in the law," she said.

Takko's bills the past two years would have required a random 3 percent of the state's registered vehicle owners to prove they've stayed insured each year. Oregon has such random checks.

But neither of them passed. Opponents worried that tighter restrictions would impose a burden on those who follow the law and discourage drivers who can't afford insurance from even registering their vehicles, Takko said.

At this point, he's at a loss for what to do. He didn't introduce an uninsured motorist bill this year, as the Legislature focuses on the state's budget deficit.

"When things were good a couple of years ago, I couldn't get people moving (on the bill)," he said. "And I think it would be even harder now."

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It's not mandatory in Washington for drivers to insure themselves against uninsured motorists, as it is in 20 other states. But it is advisable, Abeyta said. Without such insurance, there's really very little he can do for clients who have been hit by uninsured motorists. He could sue, he said, but for what?

"You can't get blood from a turnip," Abeyta said.

There are several changes that could be made to state law, including mandatory proof of insurance at the time of vehicle registration or random sampling as proposed by Takko. But even then, the results in other states have been mixed, said Brad Benfield, a spokesman for the state Department of Licensing in Olympia.

"In other states, people will go out and get insurance and then take their card down to get registered and then cancel it," he said.

The administrative costs of such plans, which Benfield could not estimate, are another hurdle. That hurdle gets higher as state budgets get worse, said Steve Weisbart, senior vice president and chief economist of the New York-based Insurance Information Institute

"Could a state legislature do something?" he said. "I think the answer probably is 'yes.' But I think there might be budgetary implications that these days are a death knell."

Adding uninsured motorist coverage to your policy may be the only remedy left, Takko said.

"I don't know, maybe we accept the fact that we have 14, 15 percent -- and in this economy maybe it's 20 percent -- of drivers who drive uninsured and insure ourselves against them," he said.

* Pat Muir can be reached at 577-7693, or at pmuir@yakimaherald.com.