ASSEMBLY, No. 2945

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

INTRODUCED MAY 8, 1997

By Assemblyman GREENWALD

An Act concerning uninsured motorists and supplementing Title 39 of the Revised Statutes.

    Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:

    1. a. The Division of Motor Vehicles in the Department of Transportation shall develop and operate a standardized and automated central statewide registry of private passenger automobile insurance information. This registry shall be known as the "Insurance Verification Database" and shall contain information regarding the automobile insurance coverage of private passenger automobiles registered in the State. The division shall require insurers to provide this information pursuant to section 2 of P.L.1972, c.205 (C.39:3-4e). Information in the database shall be made available electronically to local and State police. This database shall be updated monthly, except that information on the cancellation of motor vehicle liability insurance or nonpayment of premium pursuant to section 2 of P.L.1968, c.158 (C.17:29C-7) shall be entered immediately upon receipt.

    Information in the Insurance Verification Database shall be matched against the division's database of registered motor vehicles to determine which vehicles are uninsured.

    b. There is hereby created the "Automated Insurance Verification Fund." The fund shall be a nonlapsing revolving fund administered by the division. The fund shall be the depository of the fees imposed pursuant to section 2 of this act and any other monies made available for the purposes of this fund. Moneys in the fund shall be used exclusively to defray the division's costs of developing, maintaining, updating and improving the Insurance Verification Database.

    c. Upon request, the division shall also disclose insurance information about a person contained in the database to:

    (1) that person;

    (2) the parent or legal guardian of that person if the person is an unemancipated minor;

    (3) the legal guardian of that person if the person is legally incapacitated;

    (4) a person who has power of attorney for the person;

    (5) a person who submits a notarized release from the person dated no more than 90 days before the date the request was made; or

    (6) another person suffering loss or injury in a motor vehicle accident in which the person is involved, but only in conjunction with the submission of a police accident report.

    A person who knowingly releases or discloses information from the database for a purpose other than those authorized in this section or to a person who is not entitled to this information shall be fined no less than $500 or more than $5,000 for each release or disclosure. An insurer shall not be liable to any person for complying with the requirements of this act.

    2. On or before March 30 of each calendar year following the effective date of this act, every insurer writing private passenger automobile liability insurance in this State shall contribute to the Automated Insurance Verification Fund established pursuant to section 1 of this act $.25 per automobile year of exposure in New Jersey that it experienced in the immediately preceding calendar year. For the purposes of this section, "automobile year" means the unit of exposure equivalent to the insuring of one private passenger automobile for 12 months.

    3. This act shall take effect on the first day of the thirteenth month after enactment.

STATEMENT

    This bill directs the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to establish an "Insurance Verification Database." This database will contain information reported by insurance companies on private passenger automobiles insured in this State. This information will be matched against DMV's database of registered motor vehicles to ascertain which vehicles are not properly insured. The bill requires this information, in turn, to be made available electronically to police throughout the State. When a similar program was initiated in Utah in 1995, it is reported that the uninsured motorist rate dropped by one-third.

    The bill creates a dedicated "Automated Insurance Verification Fund" to defray the cost of developing and maintaining the Insurance Verification Database. The fund would be administered by the DMV and be the depository of annual assessments on insurers of $.25 for each private passenger automobile they insure in this state.

    The bill strictly limits the categories of individuals authorized to obtain such information from the Insurance Verification Database and establishes fines of $500 to $5000 for unauthorized disclosure of this information.

    It is hoped that by reducing the incidence of uninsured drivers, this bill will result in a decrease in the cost of uninsured motorist insurance premiums. In recent years, there have been upwards of 26,000 uninsured vehicles involved in accidents each year.

Adds passenger automobile insurance information to DMV database.