Rumors have it that the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles sent out 1.7 million letters to Georgia auto insurance customers stating that "Our records indicate that proof of insurance for the vehicle shown above has not been provided to us by your insurance company." Recipients of the letter reportedly dropped everything and flooded their insurance carriers with all sorts of worried questions.

PV Provides A Bit Of Background: A new law set to take effect on Feburary 1, 2003 requires auto insurance carriers to electronically submit proof of valid insurance policies of Georgia drivers. This new law was sponsored by the late State Senator Sam Roberts and is intended to give law enforcement real-time access to verify if a Georgia-based driver is covered by a valid auto insurance policy. The law will also, hopefully, reduce the amount of uninsured motorists' coverage all of us pay by getting these folks off the road.

The new database law was originally passed two years ago and was set to take effect January 1, 2002. However, due to bureaucratic problems between the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Revenue, and the DMV, the database wasn't built and wasn't going to be built in compliance with the law. So, one of the first things that was passed in the 2002 Session was an extension of the law until February 1, 2003.

PV Explains The SNAFU: There are approximately 370 auto insurance carriers responsible for uploading their policyholder information to the state's DMV database. The DMV contacted all insurance companies and informed them of a test period to upload their data between June 15, 2002 and August 30, 2002. This test period was to help hash-out problems on both the state's and the insurance carrier's side. However, not all insurance companies even bothered to test the uploading process during this time period.

The state then set the time period of between September 2, 2002 and September 30, 2002 to begin and complete the uploading of real data. Most insurance carriers reportedly shrugged this off as well, either due to not devoting enough financial resources to their Information Technology ("IT") departments, or just deciding that they would be able to upload everything on January 31 and be in compliance with the law.

If you've been a resident of Georgia more than a year, you know you receive a notice from your county tag office about a month ahead of your birthday, which is when payment of your yearly auto ad valorem taxes are due. In order for the county to be able to send you this letter, a data-extraction of the state's database of records must be performed 2-3 weeks before that. When the data is received by your county's tag office, they then turn it over to a printer and mail-processing facility to compile and mail it to you.

On December 4, there was a "snapshot" taken of the state's DMV database. This snapshot was basically a data-extraction of everything contained within the database as of December 4. The reason for this snapshot was to start mailing notices to people who had to be in compliance with the law set to take effect on February 1, 2003. If your insurance company didn't upload your policy data before December 4, you received one of these strongly-worded letters regarding your insurance policy not being on record as being valid with the state's database.

In some of the cases, it was probably a matter of timing between the data upload for someone's specific birthday and the snapshot date. In a lot of the other cases, it was more probably due to the particular insurance carrier's failure to upload their data back in September 2002, as stipulated by the state.

PV Is Relieved: Our insurance carrier was good enough to offer callers a recorded message stating that they were in compliance with the law and our policy was valid. Have a great holiday, everyone!

PV P.S. If you are in receipt of such a letter, we would still advise you to call your insurance company to make sure they have complied with the law and uploaded your info into the state database.