State to Lower Boom on Uninsured Drivers

Violators face revocation of their vehicle registration; New Law Provides Active Enforcement

By Frank Curreri, The Salt Lake Tribune

After nabbing or reforming an estimated 260,000 uninsured Utah motorists since 1995, officials are poised to enforce a tough new sanction: Vehicle registrations will be automatically revoked when drivers ignore requests for proof of car insurance. State officials said Tuesday that the law, which became effective July 1, gives them a stronger tactic to go after nearly 75,000 uninsured motorists still illegally cruising Utah roads.

"Before, we just sent them a letter and if they didn't respond it was neither here nor there," said Cindy Hammer, government liaison for a database created in 1995 to identify uninsured motorists. "We just hoped they'd get caught when a police officer pulled them over or something. “Now, if they don't respond to [our] second letter, their registration is automatically revoked."

Drivers suspected of being uninsured for at least three months will receive a letter asking them to provide proof of car insurance or evidence showing they are exempt from insurance requirements, within 15 days. Drivers who fail to respond within 15 days will receive a second request from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). A second cold shoulder, however, and the state promises to revoke the driver's vehicle registration within 15 days. Unregistered vehicles can be impounded if operated or parked on a public street. What's more, the owner can be slapped with a $400 fine plus a $100 reinstatement fee.

Under another new law, police can stop motorists solely for having a revoked registration. Previously, an officer could run a license plate number against the database to see whether the car was legally registered but could not stop the driver unless another traffic offense occurred. The silver lining for uninsured motorists who receive letters from the DMV: insure the vehicle, provide proof and avoid the financial penalties.

Long a problem nationwide for legislators and law-abiding motorists, uninsured motorists accounted for about 23 percent of all drivers on Utah roads in 1995, according to Richard Kasteler, chief executive officer of Insure-Rite. The private company has a contract with the state to run the database through 2010. Utah lawmakers, fed up by tales of uninsured motorists causing accidents and leaving insured drivers to foot the bill, passed a law in 1994 creating the database, which compares every motor vehicle registration against a statewide insurance policy database each month.

Officials credit the computer program with dramatically reducing the number of uninsured motorists on Utah roadways -- believed to have been as high as 335,000 motorists -- to only about 75,000, or 9 percent of the state's drivers.

Before the system was in place, there really wasn't any way to determine who was insured and who was not," said Craig Dearden, commissioner of the state's Department of Public Safety. The system isn't foolproof. In fact, even officers have been falsely fingered by the database, Dearden noted. "I got a letter telling me that the database said I was an uninsured motorist," he admitted. But such mistakes are rare, said Hammer, adding that the database has proved accurate at least 96 percent of the time. She says that helped convince legislators they could crack down on the guilty without causing headaches for the innocent.