DMV erases 9,000 insurance records, blames bad data

Agents say department’s computer still a problem By Frank X. Mullen Jr. Reno Gazette-Journal Sunday April 15th, 2001

The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles inadvertently removed 9,000 people from its rolls of insured drivers this month after receiving incorrect data from an insurance company, DMV officials said.

That means the 9,000 people received computer-generated verification notices that threatened to revoke their vehicle registrations unless they could prove they were covered by insurance.

The situation is similar to the DMV debacle of 1996-97 when a series of Gazette-Journal stories showed that as many as 6,000 drivers paid $50 fines because the DMV computer couldn’t verify they were insured. “People have said, ‘uh-oh, there goes the DMV again,’ but that isn’t what’s happening,” said Kim Evans, the department’s spokesperson. “That’s not what’s going on here. It isn’t a computer problem or glitch.

“The California State Automobile Association insurance company sent us the data and the DMV’s Genesis computer did exactly what it was told to do.”

CSAA officials in San Francisco could not be reached Friday and local CSAA agents said they aren’t authorized to comment.

The problem extends beyond one CSAA computer list, according to local insurance agents who said motorists insured by other carriers also are getting insurance verification letters. Agents said some of the DMV’s procedures to avoid the problem aren’t working.

Ginny Lewis, DMV deputy director, said the department is working with CSAA to recover the data and verify the insurance policies of the 9,000 drivers.

But one CSAA customer, Jana Wild of Reno, said her registration was revoked, even though she is fully insured.

“It says I can’t drive the car because they couldn’t verify my insurance,” she said last week. “I have insurance.”

Lewis said if Wild had continuous insurance coverage, she won’t have to pay the $250 penalty to get her registration back.

“We would have to look at her records,” she said. “As far as I know we have not suspended a customer erroneously. Where there is a discrepancy, we try to resolve it with the insurance company without affecting the customer.”

Lewis said that since 1997 the department has taken many measures to make sure insured drivers aren’t inconvenienced by the DMV’s failure to match its registration records with data supplied by insurance companies. In the last 18 months, she said, the DMV worked with insurance companies to change the matching criteria so that the number of mismatches has declined. Figures measuring that decline weren’t available late Friday, she said.

Lewis said the department’s Genesis computer, installed in 1998, now cross-checks eight digits of vehicle identification numbers on both insurance and registration forms. Then it checks both the first three letters and the last three letters of the customer’s last name on both documents.

In 1996 and 1997, the old DMV computer could not match drivers’ documents for a variety of reasons, including mismatched first names such as Bob and Robert, missing letters on vehicle identification numbers and the use of hyphenated names.

The 1997 Reno Gazette-Journal investigation of the DMV insurance verification system revealed that more innocent motorists were being fined than guilty ones. The investigation showed more than 6,000 people had their vehicle registrations revoked by the DMV and then had to pay $50 for reinstatement even though they’d done nothing wrong.

In addition, the old computer couldn’t process information fast enough for drivers to avoid having their registrations revoked.

The 1997 Legislature changed the insurance verification law to make sure the situation would not happen again and eliminated the $50 fine for insured drivers. The lawmakers also mandated nearly $200,000 could be returned to motorists affected by the law’s former provisions.

William Burgess, a Farmers Insurance agent in Reno, said while problems with mismatched names aren’t as common as they were four years ago, it’s still a problem that he sees about six times a month.

“I’ve got one sitting on my desk right now,” he said last week. “The gal got married and she hyphenated her last name on her insurance policy. The DMV computer couldn’t match her maiden-name registration with her hyphenated name.”

Lewis said that shouldn’t be happening and that she will investigate the case. She said DMV is doing all it can to prevent drivers from dealing with records problems.

“It seems their fail-safes aren’t working,” Burgess said. “The customer’s hyphenated name still contained her maiden name and the computer didn’t catch it. The VIN numbers also matched.”

Larry Heuer, a Progressive Insurance agent in Sparks, said mismatched names still cause problems. “If the last name is different on registration and insurance documents, the customer gets a verification letter,” he said. “That’s when we really earn our money. If we take the right steps it’s usually a fixable deal.”

Lewis said it’s important that the last names match on both the registration and the insurance documents. She said when there’s a problem and motorists are insured, their registrations usually aren’t revoked and they aren’t fined.

In 2000, she said, the DMV sent out 62,750 insurance verification cards that resulted in 23,329 registration suspensions. Motorists who let their insurance lapse must pay $250 to get their registrations reinstated.

“So in 2000, there were 40,000 of those verification requests resolved without suspensions,” she said. “The system is working.”

Lewis said the DMV currently sends out about 1,000 insurance verification cards per week.

http://www.rgj.com/news2/stories/news/987366511.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 16, 2001

Answers

This looks like it's part of NV's ongoing
Y2K problem with the Genesis software
introduced to make NV Y2K compliant.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), April 16, 2001.