PUBLIC HEARING: JANUARY 10, at 9:00 A.M. at HONOLULU HALE by the Committee On Safety, Economic Development And Government Affairs
HONOLULU HALE – West Oahu Councilman Tom Berg introduced two City Council Resolutions that have been scheduled for a hearing next week that urge the legislature to implement enforcement procedures to remove the uninsured motorists from the roads.
RESO11-308 urges the legislature to pass legislation requiring motor vehicle insurance carriers to provide information to the counties for development of a system to easily identify uninsured drivers and motor vehicles.
RESO11-307 urges the Hawaii state legislature to require proof of motor vehicle insurance to purchase fuel.
Uninsured drivers are adding to congestion on the City’s already overcrowded roadways. The cost to the City to implement these enforcement procedures is estimated to be about $90,000 and would remove more cars from the roads than the $5.1 billion dollar rail system
Currently, uninsured motorists are an extreme hazard to society and some drivers are habitual law violators who drive under the influence and are extremely high risk to the public’s safety. In addition, the high costs of paying for damage caused by uninsured motorists are passed on to the law biding motoring public through an extra premium.
According to the insurance commissioner, seventeen- percent of the drivers on Hawaii’s roads are uninsured. In 2010, State Data Book stated there are 618,975 licensed drivers of which 122,445 (17%) are uninsured vehicles that should not be on the roads. Currently, violations of the motor vehicle insurance requirement are hard to discover since motorists can cancel their policies right after they get their safety check and continue to use an unauthorized proof of insurance card for the remaining term of the policy.
“These measures if implemented would make it almost impossible to put a tank of gas in a stolen vehicle and also would provide traffic congestion relief without any road construction headaches or tax increases,” stated Berg, adding “Even with the rail in full operation, we will still be in a transportation crisis and my solutions are worth exploring. Since the legislature and city council have taken a position we cannot build our way out of traffic congestion, extreme measures to get compliance as to who should and who should not be on the roads must be enforced to a greater degree.”
For more information, contact Councilman Tom Berg at tberg@honolulu.gov · See more at website: www.councilmanberg.com
The effects of this proposed legislation won’t be positive.
First, what’s to stop anyone with one of these electronic insurance cards from sharing it amongst their families (and how many families in this state have to work together just to make ends almost meet)? Second, what’s to stop people from going around stealing gas out of my gas tank once this goes into effect? Third, how do you justify such a proposal when forcing any citizen of this country to purchase anything is unconstitutional?
Two other problems I see: exposing more personal information to the possibility of identity theft at the pump isn’t a good idea and if the infrastructure designed to verify insurance isn’t state of the art (which is won’t be if you’re estimating the cost of this to be only $90,000), the slowdown at the pump caused by this could cause unacceptable traffic at any gas station sitting on the corner of a busy cross street (like the Tesoro/7-11 station on the Fort Weaver / Renton intersection on your way into Ewa Beach).
It feels like this legislation is more about helping the auto insurance companies and their bottom line than it is about helping the People of Hawaii. In any case, it isn’t going to do anything to traffic but make it worse…
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